


The Woods are Lonely, Dark and Deep (continued)

by Zatnikatel



Series: The Woods are Lonely, Dark and Deep [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:03:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zatnikatel/pseuds/Zatnikatel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Rating</b> R (for violence) <br/><b>Warnings</b> References to child prostitution; allusions to noncon <br/> <br/><a id="cutid1" name="cutid1"></a><br/></p>
    </blockquote>





	The Woods are Lonely, Dark and Deep (continued)

**Author's Note:**

> **Rating**  R (for violence)   
>  **Warnings**  References to child prostitution; allusions to noncon   
>    
>   
> 

**18\. Little Miss Sunshine**

Hudak spits out the last of it and debates resting her aching head against the cool porcelain rim of the can for one one-thousandth of a second before she focuses on the stains, calculates the odds that Pa Bender regularly bleached it, and concludes it's a long-shot at best. She settles for leaning back against the murky tile wall and breathing out her stress for a couple of minutes before hauling herself up with a hand on the sink, and splashing her face.

She stares at herself in the mirror, features tired and drawn, her Florida Keys tan a distant memory. She wonders for the _nth_ time how the hell she got tangled up with this and thinks that if she hadn't swapped lunches with Matty that day, he'd have had the pleasure of Dean Winchester's company on the search for his brother. She drifts off into how it could have been, how she would have passed Matty on his way out into the parking lot, maybe nodded at the fox and glanced back over her shoulder to check out his ass before thinking there was no way anything that pretty wasn't batting for the other team, making her way into the office and never seeing him again. Though, she chides herself, _batting for the other team_ probably not the best analogy given what he's been through.

She knows she'll have to face Sam and Bobby, although her hurried departure, hand up to her mouth, must have been all the confirmation they needed. In truth it wasn't the lacerations and the bruising that had turned her stomach so much as the five oval marks, still purplish-black, in the pale, freckled skin around his left hip: four to the front, one to the back. She wonders how they could have missed them when they were cleaning him up; Lee Bender's brand, effectively seared into Dean's hide by brute force as he gripped him, as if he were nothing more than livestock, like one of Cal Mobley's cattle.

She stares at her own hand, wonders exactly how hard she would have to grip to make marks like that on someone, even rolls up her pants and tries it on her lower leg, squeezing to the point of pain and still only coming up with reddish blotches that fade in seconds. And she wonders if Bender made those bruises through sheer force or if the warfarin Dean might have been taking caused the blood to leak into his skin even with modest pressure. She thinks about the most likely of those options. Even though she doesn't want to.

There's a soft knock at the door and she knows it's Bobby even before she opens it.

"So," he says, noncommittally.

She shakes her head. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't…" She trails off, and then feels a sudden wave of anger. "Fuck. I feel I was coerced into that, I really do. I can't believe I agreed… _Jesus_. As if he hasn't been through enough."

Bobby puts a hand on her shoulder, guides her past the bedroom and into what passes for the Benders' family room, sits her on the couch.

"Sam's right," he says, softly. "We needed to know for sure so we can find out how best to help him deal with this."

"Help him?" she snaps. "That probably just set him back. You saw him."

Bobby shakes his head. "No Kathleen… listen, Dean, he isn't too good at sharing, for want of a better word. He bottles things up. He isn't gonna be able to bottle this up if he knows we know. It had to be done."

She's not about to let go of it though. "Sorry, but I'm not buying that. It was like it was happening all over again for him." She drops her face into her palm."

An awkward arm rests around her shoulders, and she and Bobby sit like that for a minute before she briskly wipes her face with her hands. "I'm going to hope he wasn't aware of that on some level," she says quietly, although she knows damn well he was aware of it on the level that mattered. "And I don't want him knowing it was me who checked."

Bobby sighs. "Well if he does remember it, he might be comforted by the fact it wasn't me or his brother who did it, Kathleen," he ventures.

She looks at him, considers. "If he asks you can tell him. But only if he asks."

The night is clear, the cloudless sky sprinkled with pinprick stars.

She has been walking for a long time, she's tired, and her heart aches with loss. Her mind is bursting with a vision of something good that was hers for such a short time, something warm, something that never hurt her, and she holds her picture, torn from Pa's bible, up to the light of the moon and gazes at it, grieving her loss.

She wants to go home, doesn't want to go anywhere with _ChildServices_ , like that doctor wanted her to after he picked her up on the road and told her Gabe was dead, swept away in the river and drowned. _Maybe that other boy will still be there_ , she muses, the one that took her angel-boy away for himself to keep forever when he should be with her, when the Lord sent him to her to save her from Jared.

Maybe that other boy will be there and she can show him what Benders do to pigs who steal their stuff. Her fingers reach into her pocket, tighten around the handle of her pigsticker. "Don't matter how big they are when they bleed," she says into the dark as it rustles around her. "Don't matter how tough they are, they all scream as loud as the next pig." She thinks of gutting pigs hung upside down from Pa's meat hook, how all it takes is one slash from pecke-to-necker, ain't that what Lee says, and all those steaming insides come spilling out down on to the dirt for the dogs to play with.

And then she remembers that other boy killed Gabe's dog.

"Mister, you got a bad temper," she mutters, as her step quickens. "Time you learn your lesson, boy."

Sam thinks it was all fucking pointless. Pointless because he saw Hudak's gaze suddenly directed at the spotted pattern on Dean's hip, saw it all slot into place in her eyes and knew instantly himself what the bruises meant. He should have seen them, should have been able to put the pieces together and solve that puzzle without humiliating his brother any more, without slicing even deeper into a sense of self esteem that was already holed below the water line before Hudak hooked her thumbs into the waistband of Dean's shorts.

The way his brother screamed sent shivers down his spine, and the way he, Sam, reacted, sent the same set of shivers racing right back up to the top. Where the fuck had channeling his dad come from? And he hears Dean's voice from back then, _you fight with him because you're alike, you're both stubborn bastards who won't give each other a fuckin' inch_. But it worked, though he doesn't like to think about Dean's startled, wide-eyed look of fear mixed with a pathetic desire to please, thinks he never again wants to see those emotions in his brother's eyes, only those deeper feelings that had flashed in them before the river took him.

"God, Dean," he breathes. "How the fuck are we gonna get past this? How the fuck am I gonna fix you this time?"

He puts his hand on his brother's, looks up at the walls, starts counting the roses on the faded wallpaper, tries to put the other things he's thinking about and imagining out of his head. But he thinks idly that Bender had it coming, that no one messes with his brother and lives, and he feels a surge of boiling, simmering, white-hot rage in his gut that he throws out like an invisible missile

The glass of water Bobby placed on the nightstand jounces up and off the surface, crashing to the floor.

"Christ," Sam blurts out. He glances over his shoulder, thanks God the door is closed, thanks God no one saw it. He doesn't dwell on how it happened and how it felt to fling out that force, like he had at Swenson's. How it felt good, cleansing, in some strange way, like a release of pressure.

He feels a tickle on his hand, looks down to where it lies on the bed and sees that Dean's hand is now lying on top of it, grasping it loosely. He glances to his brother's face, sees him staring at him, looking more lucid than he has since they walked up the trail away from this house weeks before.

"Gotta watch that, Sammy," Dean whispers, voice low and broken. "Watch that _shining_." He smiles faintly. "Still love you, kiddo… still m' brother."

Maybe not that lucid then, Sam thinks, because he knows his brother would never stumble that willingly into a real-live chick-flick moment if his head wasn't still stuffed full of cotton.

"Dean," he whispers, and he can't help it, he lifts his brother's hand up and kisses the back of it.

"Fuckin' girl…" Dean slurs lazily, but he doesn't tug his hand back, and there's an expression of such fondness on his face that Sam's throat tightens.

"Where am I?"

Sam bites his lip, wonders how much to reveal, decides on a little white lie. "At the Deputy's house – Kathleen Hudak, you remember her? You've been real sick Dean, still are. So no sudden moves, huh?"

His brother's eyes crinkle at the corners as he smirks. "Cramp… m' style?"

"I mean it Dean. You need to keep still. Jesus, you need to eat, you haven't eaten in days…"

Dean's face falls. "N' hungry… later…"

Sam takes a deep breath, jumps in. "Dean, do you remember? Do you remember what happened?"

It's almost imperceptible, only noticeable to someone who knows Dean and how he works better than he knows himself, but Sam sees how his brother's expression is suddenly guarded and his eyes are shuttered.

"Remember… what? Running… dogs… water. Woke up, see you. Nothing more…"

Sam knows he just got served, but he's read the unabridged version of the Dean Winchester Operator's Manual from cover to cover, committed the troubleshooting tips to memory, isn't fooled in the slightest. "You don't remember the kid? Bender? All those weeks?"

His brother looks at him, narrows his eyes, and Sam can almost sense his panic jumpstart, hear his heartbeat start to grow erratic and his breathing speed up fractionally. He sees Dean swallow and gag slightly, hears the wheezing begin.

"No… don't do this Dean. Look to me. _To me_. My eyes, _now_." Sam reaches for the oxygen mask, turns the knob on the tank, places it over his brother's nose and mouth for a minute, and Dean's fingers clutch at the quilt as he fights the tickle that threatens to erupt into coughing. "Shhhhh," Sam soothes. "Breathe. Not gonna happen, Dean, just not gonna happen. _Calm_." He sees his brother's breathing even out, sees he's able to reach the peak of his inhalation without sputtering, removes the mask.

Dean stares right at him, doesn't drop his eyes at the lie. "Blank… blanked it out… s'nothin' there…"

Sam nods slowly. "Okay. Okay." He reaches over to shut off the valve on the tank. "But you need to eat, I'll see if Kathleen has anything."

His brother quirks a weak smile. "Kathleen. I remember her. Sweet. Tell her I'll take her home again…"

Sam rolls his eyes, gets up and heads towards the door.

"Sam…" his brother calls out after him hoarsely, and he turns, goes back and leans down.

"What do you need, kiddo?"

"S' important…"

"Anything. What?"

"No… meat… _meat_ food. Please. S'important…"

Dean's eyes drift closed, what little energy he has drained right out of him by the effort expended in speech, and Sam presses a large hand to his brow, suddenly flashes to the FBI report and knows how important his brother's plea is, knows that it's going to be a long time before he can make it through a day without feeling his gorge rise at what Dean has endured.

Knows damn well his brother remembers what has happened to him, to the last fucking detail.

_All the nightmares you ever had are real_.

Those were Bobby's words.

Hudak is standing on the porch and Christ, she's longing for a smoke even though it's six years since she quit. Maybe not so much for the nicotine but so she'll have something she can do with her hands, something to stop them shaking in the wake of what Bobby has told her. She roots in her pocket, finds a quarter and sits down on the step, starts trying to feed it in and out over her fingers like all the best Mafiosi can do. Having to field it as it falls to the ground and rolls away takes her mind off ghosts, werewolves and zombies for whole seconds at a time.

She'd love to think the old man is crazy but she knows in her heart he's no nutjob, and the story he's just spun her fits the boys like a glove. And it all makes sense now: his diatribe against their father, the picture he's drawn her of Dean as an emotionally needy serial killer of things that go bump in the night, and his brother, desperate to escape and maybe build a life that doesn't end sad and bloody.

The door opens behind her and she's so lost in thought she almost tips flat on her back. She looks up into the non-psychopathic-lunatic Winchester's eyes, and Sam folds his lanky frame in half to sit beside her.

"Bobby says he told you."

"He sure did."

"You okay with it?"

"That may well be the dumbest thing you've said to me, Sam."

"Dumber than no hospital?"

She snorts. "Well it ranks up there alongside no hospital."

Sam smiles, grows serious then. "But you understand now why I couldn't take him there? Why it's dangerous for him? It's better if the Feds think he's dead and you know the police probably would have run his prints because of the bullet wound. And the rest of it… his injuries."

She nods, because it's true. "What are you going to do Sam?" she says. "With him, I mean? I just—he just isn't the person I met, and all this just seems insurmountable to me. I guess you've maybe seen him worse and seen him claw his way back…"

Sam looks at the ground between his legs for a moment. "Honestly? I have no clue. I've seen him worse off physically, yeah, but this other thing… I've been trying to think of a way to broach it with him once he's up to it, but Jesus, what would I say? I guess the easy way would be to hang on and see if he caves first."

Hudak takes a few more rounds with her quarter, drops it in the dirt every single time. "I knew someone that happened to," she says then. "College buddy. And, uh, it… wasn't pretty. Are you going to get any help with it?"

Sam snorts. "What, a shrink? Counselor? 'Bout as likely as the devil drinking holy water." He glances over at her. "That college buddy, what happened to him? You said it wasn't pretty."

She sighs at the memories. "Oh… he just… he just never really found his way back from it."

Sam's look says he knows exactly what she's saying.

H returns to looking ahead, scanning the darkness. "My brother isn't getting lost in this," he whispers after a moment.

Bobby makes an airplane noise as he swoops the spoon down towards Dean's mouth and the kid has the good grace to smile drowsily, though he doesn't seem too impressed by the food, grimacing as he chews slowly, swallowing only with obvious effort and finally turning his face away altogether.

"One more?" Bobby tries, but it's no use. "Alrightie, son, but you're gonna be dropping back down to your birthweight at this rate."

He fusses about wiping Dean's face with a damp cloth, ignoring the hand that tries to bat him away.

"W' the fuck?" Dean grouses. "Off me, Lee."

Bobby pricks his ears up at that, reaches his hand down to grip Dean's chin and turn his face to look at him. "I'm not Lee, Dean," he says gently. "And you aren't Gabe. Now this drifting off has got to stop, boy, you hear?"

Dean squints up at him, seems to snap back to awareness, albeit tinged with confusion. "Bobby… dude… _whassit_?"

Bobby shakes his head, sits down on the side of the bed. "Come on boy, you need to try and stay in the now, it's—"

The door suddenly pushes open and Hudak's dog bounds in, grinning, tongue lolling, throwing what looks like a pair of balled tube socks up into the air and showering drool everywhere as it snaps its jaws down on its prey with an audible click.

Bobby feels the movement from the bed before he hears the croaked, low-pitched protest.

"No… no… please don't… get it, get it _out_ …"

He turns to see Dean hoisting himself weakly up to the top of the bed, pressing into the headboard, face milk-pale with shock as the keening rises to full-throated cries: his brother's name.

Sam is in there in a second, hauls the hound back out in the hallway, and sprints back in to gather Dean in his arms almost faster than Bobby's eyes can see, scrabbling for the oxygen mask as the wheezing starts up. "Got you," Sam says calmly. "I got you. I got you, Dean, I got you."

Bobby leans over, turns the valve on the tank, and Dean's labored pants gradually calm once he sees the dog has gone.

Sam looks back at Bobby. "We need to keep the dog in another room if that door doesn't latch properly… we can't have it coming in here, he could hurt himself if it scares him."

Bobby nods, gets up. "I'll put her in the family room."

As Dean's violent shaking eases off, his arms let go their hold on Sam's shirt and he slumps in exhaustion.

"Come on, relax man," Sam soothes. "Back to bed. It's just Hudak's dog, it's harmless."

"Thought… I thought…"

"I know, Dean. I know what you—"

"How the fuck would you know?" Dean cries suddenly, an almost-yell, irritable, borderline damn mean, Sam thinks.

"You know fuck all…" Dean spits as Sam stands and pulls up the blankets, and then his voice takes on a note of panic and despair, and he tugs at Sam's sleeve. "Can't sleep, Sammy," he whispers. "Bad feelin'… something bad coming."

Sam parks his right haunch back on the bed. "Dean, it's over," he says slowly. "They're gone. You're safe, you're with me and Bobby. You need to sleep, dude, get better."

Dean shakes his head agitatedly, eyes huge. "No, no… Can't sleep, Sammy, y' see… can't sleep. See things… _things_ …"

Sam raises an eyebrow, thinks _gotcha_. "See what, Dean? You said you didn't remember. Do you remember?"

And his brother shuts down just like before. "No… no. Just tired."

"Then sleep. I'll be right here."

"Can't sleep. Sammy. Can't. Need something… to help."

Sam sighs long and deep. "What'll help you sleep, Dean?"

His brother's face brightens. "Red ones, Sammy. They help me sleep." He scowls again as Sam shakes his head.

"No more pills Dean. Sleep. I'll be right here in the chair."

Sam moves off the bed, pulls up the chair, a motheaten Barcalounger Bobby dragged in from the other room, gets comfortable.

"Fuckin' bastard," Dean snarls weakly. "Need 'em." He mutters a few curses as Sam settles in. "Lee'd give 'em to me," he says, spitefully.

Sam ignores him, doesn't pull him up over the fact he's just name-checked Bender after denying all knowledge, and his brother falls quiet for a few minutes.

"Be right there, Sammy?" he whispers.

"Be right here, Dean."

Missy rubs herself a clean spot on the glass, peers into the dimly lit room.

Her eyes light up with joy.

Bobby is sacked out on the couch, dreaming about Cancun, his last jaunt there with Rufus, dreaming about dusky maidens dotting his face with fairy kisses that get sloppier and sloppier until he comes round to the messy reality of Hudak's dog slobbering all over him.

"Uh! Off! Get off! _Jesus_. Kathleen, come get your—"

And suddenly he's coughing as he takes in a lungful of smoke, hears crackling, spitting sounds. The dog is frantic, pawing at the door and Bobby lurches up and over there, lays his palm on the wood, finds it boiling hot.

He sniffs in deep.

He knows the smell of kerosene anywhere.

Sam's throat is tickling and he can feel tears on his cheeks, and a burning in his mouth. He cracks his eyes open and feels a stinging sensation, sees a haze in the air, smells… _gasoline_?

He sits bolt upright, stares into his brother's frightened eyes, follows the knife held to his throat up the grimy hand and skinny arm attached to the alive-and-kicking Missy Bender.

"Don't hurt him!" Sam yelps as he gets up and backs away, unthreatening, until he's up against the door. He can feel the heat of the worn wood even through his tee and shirt, knows that means the flames must be close up outside the room.

His sneakers slip in something wet and he follows the trail of liquid right up to the gas can lying on its side vomiting its contents out over the floorboards. The whole floor around the bed and up to the window is saturated. Black smoke seeps in under the door and he reaches out with his foot, hooks the ragged shirt his brother had been wearing when he went in the river from where they threw it on the floor, and heels it up against the bottom of the door in an attempt to block off the gap.

The girl smiles, shakes the box of matches in her hand. "Betcha sorry now, Mister," she taunts through her own spluttering coughs.

Sam can hear Dean's terrible efforts to breathe, see his chest heaving up and down and the tears streaming down his cheeks, see his wild-eyed alarm, hear him beginning to cough. "Please… Missy. Let me take him outside. He's sick… he can't breathe, the smoke will kill him."

"Ain't yours, Mister," the girl snaps, rubing her eyes and wilting slightly. "He's mine."

Her hand slips a little, and Dean winces, whimpers.

Sam fights the urge to cough, clears his throat. "You can keep him. Come outside with us and you can keep him," he croaks, his throat catching now on every word. "We can't stay in here, Missy, we can't breathe…"

He moves a step towards her, calculates whether he can get to her and grab the knife before she slashes his brother's jugular, and sees Dean shift minutely up away from the increased pressure of the blade.

"Please, Missy. I thought you loved him… you love him don't you? You don't want to hurt him do you?"

He thinks she might be swaying now but his lungs are so tight he knows it might be him. She's coughing, he can hear it, muffled, as if she's getting further away, and he can see that Dean's chest isn't rising and falling quite as rapidly, sees that his brother's eyes are half-closed as he succumbs.

"No one's keepin' him but me," the girl is crying, wiping away tears with her free hand, and in the next instant she drops the knife and she falls.

Sam lunges, but only in his mind, because he's really falling down onto his hands and knees, coughing, spitting, his vision blurred by smoke and tears, but not so blurred he doesn't see the bright spark of flame as she lights the match, a tiny shooting star trailing down to the pool of accelerant, where it flares up into a bright orange sunburst of flames that eat everything in their path.

**19\. The Frayed Ends of Sanity**

Hudak is coming round, spluttering, and Bobby sits her with her head between her legs before he stumbles away, hollering.

She looks up and he's about ten feet away from the window that looks into the room where Sam and Dean are. The glass has exploded, and tongues of flame are greedily reaching out to the breeze, feeding on its life-giving oxygen.

And Bobby sinks to his knees, crying out, their names, she thinks.

She pushes herself up onto her feet, walks over beside him, sits next to him, dazed. He collapses forward onto his hands, his face in the grass, and he sobs.

The fire roars its rage at Sam like some wild animal, licking out at him, pinning him down with one searing hand while it reaches out the smashed window and up to the heavens with myriad others. He heaves himself up, knows he needs to act now, doesn't quite remember why.

He reaches out, pats the air, finds the end of the bed-frame, and it seems like days, weeks, _years_ pass by as he feels his way along the bed to his brother. Squinting through the smoke, he sees the oxygen mask, places it on Dean's slack face, twists the valve. His brother lifts a vague hand and makes feeble circles in the air.

The oxygen mask, Sam's brain says, patiently. The oxygen mask is attached to the oxygen tank.

_Yep, the oxygen tank_ , he thinks stupidly.

Yes, Sam, says his brain, in the long-suffering tone it uses so often with his brother. The oxygen tank smack-bang in the middle of a fireball, and _doh_ , his brain facepalms, prissy now. _Do not expose oxygen to extreme heat or a naked flame, Sammy!_

Fuck.

Sam rips off the mask, hauls Dean's limp body up into a sitting position, ignoring his brother's goggle eyes and the bullet wound, hefts him over his shoulder, thanking God he's a lightweight these days, and staggers to the door. He yelps as he grabs the doorknob, snatches his hand back from its boiling heat, can already feel blisters bubbling up on his palm. He wraps his hand in his shirt-tail, pulls the door, recoils from the blast of heat and billowing smoke.

Jesus. Bad idea, and he kicks the door closed on the towering inferno, wonders confusedly if a towering inferno can even happen in a single floor house, has enough sense to realize his mind is wandering because of the smoke.

He leans over the bed, drops his brother back down on it, hauls the oxygen tank into the bathroom as far out of reach of the flames as he can, and parks it in the shower. He tears his shirt off, thanks Christ the well pump is still operating as he soaks the fabric until it's dripping and rips off one of the sleeves, wrapping it around the lower half of his face to cover his nose and mouth.

He stumbles back into the bedroom on time to see the first flames catch the bed, the pillows combusting with a flash. He heaves Dean down onto the floor, sees his eyes snap open and spin around as his back and head impact on the hard surface, fumbles to wrap the rest of the wet shirt around Dean's face even though his brother's eyes are staring at him in obvious dismay and confusion.

He mutters a steady mantra as he pulls Dean up onto his shoulder again, "It's okay, it's okay," but his voice is so muffled he's afraid it might actually be scaring his brother rather than reassuring him. Again with the door, hand well padded with the end of his tee this time, and even though only a minute-and-a-half at the most has passed since his first attempt, the hallway is like a duststorm screwing a tornado on the fourth of July: a willful, whirling cloud of smoke, soot, cinders, sparks, flashes, crackles and bangs.

Left or right?

_Think_.

He lurches to the right, feels the heat crisping his eyeballs, smells the acrid scent of burning and knows it's his own hair being singed. He doesn't even know if Dean is conscious, hopes he isn't as he staggers along, lurching into the wall as he goes, yelping as its boiling heat burns his arm.

He sways and loses his balance, hits the wall again, feels his brother's body pad him and nudge him back off like he's the eightball bouncing off the cushions on a pool table, Dean's skin being flame-grilled on the scorching surface in the process. And he feels Dean's body pad him again and break his fall when his foot catches in something and he crashes down, seeing stars and then blacking out completely.

Bobby's quiet now, sitting watching the house burn, and they both fall back reflexively as a small explosion, followed by a much larger burst, blows a hole through the roof above the bedroom and brings tiles raining down around them.

The oxygen tank, Hudak thinks bleakly, looking up to where the flames are lighting up the sky now.

She leans over. "We should go. This must be visible from town and the police are probably on their way."

Bobby says nothing, just stares.

Hudak stands, pulls him up and he doesn't resist. "We have to go," she tells him. "Come on."

He's pinned down, his throat is burning hot and his face is covered by something damp clamped over his mouth. _Hand… holding in his cries_.

He tries to buck Lee off, jerking his body with all the force he can muster, yelling out his protest and hammering his fists on his brother's back. "Get off me! You don't do this to me, you sick fuck," he hears himself shout. "Fuckin' monster! Kill you, you sonofabitch…"

His fury lends him strength and he pummels Lee, flings him off, races out of reach, to _safety_ , and lives happily ever after.

Sam comes around with a jolt, hears soft whispery cries and gasps, finds himself flopped over his brother, who's doing the half-naked pretzel underneath him and making the barest shaking motion under Sam's greater bulk.

Sam is dazed, watches the fingers of Dean's right hand scribble tiredly on the floor for a second, feels a soft patting on his back and realizes it's Dean's other hand, beating a gentle tattoo.

_Jesus, it's hot_ , he thinks. _But at least it's a dry heat_.

He hears the roar, raises his head and it all comes careering towards him, and he can almost hear Dean crowing inside his head, _dude, it's like that fuckin' awesome scene in Jaws when Brody thinks he sees the shark and the camera races right at him!_ He pushes up onto his hands and feet, and in a weird way the fall has been their salvation because down here close to the floor there's less smoke and Sam's head can clear enough for him to think. He flops over onto his butt, grabs his brother by the arm and hauls him along the floor, trying not to think about what it must be doing to his shoulder.

Cold, dark air on his face at last, and Sam sucks in a great heaving breath of it as he totters through the doorway, blinking away tears as he squints ahead to where he can see Kathleen Hudak and Bobby stumbling towards her car.

He opens his mouth, releases a strangled cry, and Bobby is already halfway there when he collapses to his knees. He gives Sam a cursory glance before heaving Dean up into a fireman's lift and lumbering away from the burning house, towards the Jeep. "Oxygen tank!" Sam hears him yell as he lays Dean carefully on the ground. "The other one's still in the car!"

He races back then, to sling Sam's arm over his shoulder and help him over to sit next to his brother while Hudak hefts the tank across the grass towards them. Sam is coughing, wheezing much as his brother's phlegm-filled lungs have been these last two days. He sucks in greedily for a few seconds when Hudak kneels and clamps the mask to his face, then pushes it away. "Dean… Dean," he rasps out.

Bobby is leaning over Dean, slapping his face lightly and blowing on his eyelids in an attempt to rouse him, and Hudak fastens the mask over his face. "We need to leave," she shouts, above the noise of roaring flames and crashing roof timbers. "The cops will be here any minute."

Bobby nods, hauls Dean up, hands under his shoulders, while Sam crawls over and grabs his brother's ankles. They shamble to the car and Sam inserts himself ass first into the back of the Jeep, catching his brother as Bobby feeds his limp body in on top of him, Hudak close behind with the oxygen tank.

As they pull up the trail, Sam can't help wondering if his brother would have gone back in for the kid.

Dean is red hot and drenched in sweat when Bobby eases his limp body out of the Jeep, his teeth chattering so loudly he sounds like a jackhammer. "Jesus. He's burning up," he says to Hudak, as she leads them inside.

"We'll put him in my bed," she says, climbing the stairs. "I've got a thermometer somewhere."

"Check his back for burns," Sam calls wearily from where he's slumped on the bottom step, as Bobby follows Hudak up the narrow stairs to her bedroom, Dean slung over his shoulder.

As he maneuvers through the doorway, he gapes at the fact that it's _like a fuckin' birthday cake_ , all flowers, frills, a mountain of small and utterly pointless cushions, and he reckons some bits are even frosted. Like the cover of House Beautiful, not that Bobby has ever glanced at it while he waits in line at the checkout. He can't help but smirk at the thought of Dean confined in there for God knows how long while he heals. _Payback's a bitch, boy_ , he thinks, as he lowers his burden down onto the bed, although he feels a stab of envy as the kid sinks into the softness.

"Urrghh. And that is just how I'm startin' to feel about this whole mess," he says, straightening up and getting his first good look at Dean when Hudak turns on the lamp. He's smudged gray and black with ash and soot that mix with the sweat to form tar-like streaks. The mess is already rubbing off onto Hudak's pristine comforter, leaving the fabric looking as bruised as Dean's carcass.

Hudak appears with her first aid kit, bustling about while Bobby stands there feeling like the fifth wheel. "Judas priest," she mutters when the thermometer beeps. "104.9… that's seizure territory and I'm sure we'd all just as soon not go there with him again."

She whistles out air, purses her lips. "Sam said to check his back. Says he belted him up against the wall and he might be burnt."

Bobby rolls Dean over onto his side, his lax body totally pliant. He fumes inwardly again at the greenish-yellow reminder of Bender's size twelve, winces at the numerous red-raw, blistering patches where the heat seared off the top layers of Dean's skin.

"I'd say he's medium rare," Hudak says, beside him. "I'll get something for the burns, but I think we're going to need to get him in the shower before we do anything else, cool him off."

Bobby nods. "Burns are a fuckin' nasty business," he mutters, pulling the comforter up and up over Dean as he starts shivering again. Dean flickers his eyes open, the flash of green red-rimmed and swollen, coughs dryly, starts running his tongue over his lips, breathing noisy. Thirsty, he must have a raging thirst, Bobby realizes, and he crosses to the door and hollers for Sam to bring water.

Less than a minute later Sam is hovering next to Bobby, as filthy as his brother, brandishing a stainless steel sports bottle with a straw built into the lid. _Fuckin' great idea_ , Bobby thinks, because he's been standing there wondering where he can get his hands on one of those plastic sippy cups his son used to drink juice from all those years ago.

Sam looks fit to drop, and in fact he does, sitting down heavily on the floor next to the bed as Bobby lifts Dean's head and pokes the straw through his lips. "Take some O2, kid," he says, nods at the oxygen mask as Dean comes round enough to gulp a few mouthfuls down before he starts to dribble the water out.

Sam shakes his head. "Dean needs it," he croaks, before coughing up something Bobby thinks looks unsettlingly like that black oil the aliens used to leak out all over the place in that show about little green men and government conspiracies.

Thoughts of the short, sexy redhead are a pleasant diversion from their present troubles for an instant, before Bobby is brought plummeting back down to earth by a wave of nausea that has him slamming the water bottle down on Hudak's nightstand and diving for the bathroom.

He retches unproductively for a few minutes, stares at his pale, ill-looking face in the mirror and rubs a shaking hand across his brow.

"You okay?" Hudak says from the open doorway.

"Yeah… yeah," he says, flushing now in embarrassment.

"All catching up to you, huh?" she says, and her eyes are warm with sympathy, so warm he gulps.

"Something like that," he says. "The thought of losing _him_ was bad enough, but Sam too… just – too much. Too much…"

She nods and leaves it there, for which he's grateful because, _hell_ , he has already spilled his guts far too much this week. "There's coffee downstairs," she says then. "I can do this if you're beat. Blankets for the couch are in the hall closet."

Bobby follows her back into the bedroom, tempted by the thought of coffee so strong it'll stain his soul brown, but he hesitates. "What about cleaning him up?" he says. "He's dropped a lot of weight but it's gonna be dead weight…"

"I got it, Bobby," Sam says, from where he's leaning against the bed. "Get some rest, man. I can handle him in the shower. I need to get cleaned up myself anyway."

Bobby nods, turns to leave but then glances back at Sam, who's already pulling his tee over his head. It's going be harsh, blunt, awkward, however he terms it. "Sam, maybe you might want to leave the clothes on for this," he says quietly.

Sam stops halfway, face quizzical.

"The water's likely to bring him round to some level of awareness, boy," Bobby continues gently. "I don't think we want him coming out of this while he's being manhandled by a naked guy, even if it is you."

Hudak gets it, Bobby can see, but Sam is still staring up at him with an expression that shouts, _huh_?

"He's confused, Sam," Hudak elaborates. "He might not realize it's you. He might think something else is going on."

Sam slips his tee back down wordlessly.

It's as bad as Bobby thought it might be.

Dean revives in a frenzy of cries that are choked off by the spray of water and fights Sam with a strength he didn't think his brother was capable of in his present condition, fists beating at Sam's torso and feet skating every which way on the wet tile. Talking to him has absolutely no effect, his brother is in his own private hell.

Sam catches a glimpse of Hudak flapping about anxiously outside the shower cubicle, towels in hand, face worried, and he thinks this was a huge mistake and maybe she should have gotten in there with Dean instead, that his brother would have come around to an opportunity and not an ordeal.

"Dean, Christ, stop—ow, _fuck_!" he yelps, as his brother's knee barely misses his jewels, and there's nothing for it: Sam uses controlled brute strength to grip his brother's upper arms and turn his slippery body slowly, steadily around, as carefully as he can, mindful of Dean's shoulder and cracked and broken ribs, doing his best not to dislodge the plastic bag Hudak duct-taped onto the broken arm to protect his cast from the water.

He has his brother turned partway around when Dean strikes as fast as a rattler, sinking his teeth into the meat of Sam's forearm, and Sam yelps, forces his brother face-first up against the tile, his own hip and thigh keeping Dean pinned in place, the water pouring down and washing away the muck.

All the fight seems to go out of Dean and he stops struggling. His voice is quiet, all but drowned out by the water, and Sam just barely hears him.

"Why… why you doin' this…"

"Dean, come on," Sam tells him. "It's me, Sam. You're running a fever, we need to cool you down. It's me, it's your brother."

Dean's cheek is against the tile, and the eye Sam can see widens slightly. "Lee. Don't. Please."

Sam can't help himself, he hisses in Dean's ear. "Fucking snap out of it, Dean. It's over. Lee Bender is dead. He wasn't your brother. It's me. _Sam_. I'm your brother and I would never hurt you like he did."

He doesn't think he's imagining it: he feels his brother relax fractionally.

"Sam," Dean mutters. "Damn… fkn' right… _Sammy_ …"

It's two steps forward, one step back, Sam is thinking an hour later.

He's showered himself and clad in some of Riley Hudak's cast-offs, thanking God the dude matched his own six feet four inches and he isn't padding around in sweats that end midpoint between his knees and ankles.

Dean is reasonably lucid, a fresh bandage on his shoulder, a liberal application of burn ointment slathered on his back and just-this-side-of-tight strapping around his chest, Sam having decided the ribs need support after the fucking debacle that was the shower. Forty-five minutes of pure oxygen seem to have soothed Dean's cough, and Sam finds the tightness in his own chest has eased off somewhat, his lungs protected from the worst of the choking smoke by the soaked shirt he wrapped around his face, although the inside of his nose smarts and dribbles black snot.

On that thought, he pulls the mask away from his brother's face, holds a Kleenex against his nose. "Blow."

Dean obeys, scowls as Sam wipes. "I'm not a fuckin' kid," he coughs, reaching weakly for the mask again. His eyes, barely open, are interested enough to make it to half-mast when Hudak comes in with a tray, and Sam spots the familiar gleam that signals his brother's inner cougar hound scenting fresh prey as he pulls the mask away himself this time.

"Hoah… Dn W'nchester," he slurs, even manages to rustle up a reasonable facsimile of his tried-and-tested thousand-watt smile. "Like the gun."

"We've met," Hudak says dryly, parking the tray on her dresser. "Soup, Sam," she smiles brightly as she exits.

Dean stares after her for a second, and then swivels his eyes around to glare at his brother. "Fuckin' cockbl'ker…"

Sam rolls his eyes, reaches for his cup of soup, sees Hudak has thoughtfully served Dean's up in a bowl with a spoon. He takes a draught of his own, closes his eyes in sheer bliss as the warmth seeps down into his belly. He sets the cup back on the tray, reaches for the bowl and spoon. "Vittals, dude."

And Dean's expression suddenly turns to one of alarm.

"Wha? _Whassay_?"

"Soup. Dean you need to eat something, you've barely eaten in days."

Sam can see his brother knows this, sees his eyes calculating as they look at the bowl and then at Sam.

"Uh… soup. Kinda soup?"

Sam sighs, sets the bowl down, leans forward. "It's chicken soup, Dean. You're eating it. Not optional, dude, okay?"

Dean's mouth sets in an obstinate line. "Nope."

"Listen to me, Dean," Sam counters, his tone sharp. "I know what you're doing. I know why. I know damn well you remember what happened. But it's over and we haven't come this far so you can waste away because you think it's hikers for dinner." He regrets it the minute he says it, sees his brother's face take on a deer-in-the-headlights expression and his whole body go tense.

"Wh-wh-whassay…?" Dean mutters, and Sam sees his knuckles go white as he fists a handful of the blankets.

"Dean, please," he says, softer now. "We don't know if they gave you that. But if they did, you didn't know. It wasn't your fault. And if they didn't, then you're starving yourself for nothing."

His brother looks subdued now, face blank, and he presses his lips together again.

"Dean. You aren't going to get better if you don't eat," Sam whispers, feeling sudden tears well up. He swipes his sleeve across his eyes, shakes his head.

"Sammy…" he hears his brother breathe out. "S'okay, Sammy. B' fine… jus' not hungry…"

Sam steels himself, stares his brother right in the eyes. "If you don't eat, by Christ, I am going to force this down you. Even if it hurts you. I'm not sitting here watching you fade away to bones in front of me because of some fucked-up phobia that might be totally bogus."

He waits then, but he doesn't see any hint of cooperation on Dean's face, in fact his brother's eyes go arctic-cold, hostile. So he breaks out the big guns. "Last chance Dean. Eat. _Now_. Or I am out of here and back to Stanford first flight I can get."

He's played Dean beautifully, he thinks, and he manages to convince himself it was the only way as he spoons the last of the now-tepid soup into his brother's mouth a half-hour later. Dean's face is grayish, his eyes sad. Sam knows he shouldn't have forced the whole bowl on him, knows his brother's atrophied stomach might not be able to take it.

He stands up, lifts the tray. "I'm gonna take this back down, get some more water," he says, and he can't help feeling a mean-spirited sense of satisfaction at the fact it's Dean's turn to get served, satisfaction that dissolves into a muddy wallow of guilt as he reaches the door and his brother gives a panicked croak.

"You leaving? Sam? You still leaving? _Sammy_?"

Sam spins around, sees Dean pushing himself up onto his elbows, wincing as he does so. He drops, puts the tray on the floor, goes back and pulls his brother up into a fierce embrace. "No, no, Dean… I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not leaving. I just want you to get better. You have to eat. You have to get better. You have to."

Dean doesn't fight, but he doesn't relax in Sam's arms either. In fact his body goes from nought to sixty on the rigid-with-alarm rating in less than five seconds before he's trying to fidget his way free.

"Try, Sam. I'll try…"

Sam smiles against his brother's neck, and his words come out all muffled. "No. There is no try. There is only do. Or do not."

And then he feels Dean shudder in his arms, relax just a tad, and he lowers his brother back down onto the pillows.

"N' fair, dude…" Dean says, but he's smiling – sort of. "Yoda? Low blow…"

Another step forward.

Oh-dark-thirty.

Two steps back.

Sam jolts awake to screams that have him blearily wrestling his way out of his sleeping bag as Dean writhes and yells a stream of nonsense. In the end he's forced to sack-race the few feet to the bed, flopping gracelessly down beside his brother and clutching his flailing hands just as Bobby bursts into the room, and having to shout words of comfort over the noise even though he knows that raising his voice totally defeats the purpose.

"Maybe we should cuff him," Bobby says in Sam's left ear, and he's come prepared, is dangling a pair of Hudak's tools of the trade in front of him.

There really isn't any alternative, Sam knows, and he nods, thinks he'd rather take Dean's crap when he comes out of it than have him hurt himself worse. But seeing his brother pulling at the bracelet once again, hearing the clink of metal when he'd thought they might be making progress, tears at him like one of Bender's pitbulls. Even so, not being able to fight his nightmare seems to have the desired effect and Dean quietens down, though he keeps up a hoarse, muttered litany of vicious curses and threats.

Sam jumps as Bobby's hand falls on his shoulder, he's almost forgotten the old man's there, so absorbed is he in his brother's struggle.

"Want me to spell you, kid?" Bobby says, low in his ear, and Sam shakes his head no, but Bobby sits down next to him anyway. "Hard times," he murmurs, scratches his mussed up bed hair.

"I don't know what to do, Bobby," Sam suddenly hears himself saying. "I don't know how to help him, what to say. And I'm afraid he's never really coming back from this, that we're losing him."

Bobby reaches a hand up to the scruff of Sam's neck, holds him there, kneads the tight muscles. "Maybe we just have to accept that we are gonna lose, _have_ lost, some part of him, Sam," he says, gruffly. "I just don't see how he can be the same. We can't be expecting him to just bounce back, kid, it just isn't gonna happen."

Sam's brain knows that's true but his heart just isn't going for it. "I don't want to lose him, Bobby, even a part of him. Everything about him is, is, _precious_. I can't spare any of it."

Bobby huffs out, nods. "I understand that, Sam, but I think maybe you're being unrealistic. Having expectations of him that he can't meet, isn't _able_ to meet, isn't gonna help either him or you."

"I know… God, I know. But I just can't—"

" _Dad_ …?"

Dean's voice is awestruck, his exhausted face suddenly alight with joy as Sam turns back to face him.

"Dad…" Dean breathes as he gazes at Sam, and God, he's crying, shaking with it. "He said you were dead… Lee said you were dead."

Sam knows he's John Winchester walking minus thirty years or so; he has the same dark features, the same eyes, the same glower, the same mood swings, and, he knows all too well now, the same voice, the same ability to strike the fear of God into Dean in his present confused state. He goes with the subterfuge as long as it might calm his brother down, lays a hand on Dean's cheek, wipes away the tears. "I'm fine, Dean," he says firmly. "Lee lied to you, son. Everything's fine, and you need to rest. _Rest_. That's an order."

It works like a charm: his brother's eyes drift closed and he's out like a light.

Sam knows his face must look desperate when he turns to Bobby.

"He's hallucinating, Sam," the old man says quickly. "It's the withdrawal kid, believe me. He's just… AWOL. It'll clear. His system just needs to get back into gear after the drugs."

He must see Sam's doubt, because he continues. "Sam, believe me. As unsettling as this is, it is not what we need to be worrying about. This will pass. It's the other stuff we need to be thinking about. And it's clear we're out of our depth here, so we need to start finding out what to expect."

Sam doesn't miss the subtext in what Bobby's saying. "You think it could be even worse than this?"

Bobby throws his hands up. "No, I didn't say that, Sam. I don't know. Neither of us does. But it's clear he's having flashbacks to what the sonofabitch did to him, and we need to know how to get him past that."

Sam thinks about the shower, about Dean's ferocity despite his injuries, glances at Bobby and sees his thoughts reflected in the older man's eyes.

"Dean can drop a man twice his size in point five of a second," Bobby says softly. "He's a lethal weapon, and once he's up and about we can't have him firing at random just because some barfly's undressing him with his eyes."

Dean is the vilest of the vile the next morning, after a curt _get these fuckin' cuffs off_ , has no memory of his little-boy-lost ramblings the night before. Once free he gives Sam the evil eye and spits tacks, albeit weakly, over his back, his shoulder, his leg, his ribs, his lungs, the _fuckin' cuffs_ , pausing only to hoik up sludge into a towel when the coughing flares up.

Sam heaves him up higher on the pillows and has to duck an attempt to dry slap him around the head with the cast, showers and dresses along to a tired torrent of abuse, periodically stops what he's doing to squint at Dean, fully expecting his head to spin and pea soup to erupt from his mouth at any minute.

"Th' fuck you lookin' at?" his brother growls. "Hurts, can't sleep. Need m' fuckin' pills. Asshatt."

Oy. Sam shrugs. "Sorry, kiddo, pills burnt down with the house," he says, and gets that nasty shot of satisfaction again as Dean's face falls. He can't resist adding, "Your peyote, too. Yep, charred to a crisp."

Dean is suddenly quiet. "Wasn't she there?" he says after a minute, almost timid. "Missy. In the house. Did she… _burn_?"

_Fuck_. And Sam can't believe that he's actually forgotten, hasn't thought of the kid since that fleeting moment when they drove away from the inferno. "She was there," he confirms somberly. "I couldn't go back inside for her, it was too late. The oxygen tank was in there… it exploded."

He can't really tell what Dean is thinking because his brother's expression is unreadable.

"Dean. We're gonna get through this, you and me, together," he says. "But you need to talk to me, you can't just keep it all inside, what Lee did to you, it'll—"

Dean cuts in, controlled and menacing, even though his voice is still heavy with hurt and illness. "Nothing happened with Lee. There's nothing to talk about."

"But Dean—"

"But nothing, Sam. You're imagining things. Nothing happened. So fuck the fuck off and leave me alone. And just so we're clear, I ain't fuckin' hungry."

Sam fucks off. He parks himself downstairs at Hudak's computer, boots up the web browser. "My brother was raped," he says out loud, to thin air, and it's okay because Bobby and Hudak are off somewhere else in the house, can't hear him. It's the first time he's really let himself think the actual word, the first time he's voiced it instead of pussyfooting around it with terms like _attack_ , and _abuse_ , and _assault_.

And he Googles _male rape_.

**20\. Everything You Left Me Rambles in My Head**

Sometimes he sleeps. Sometimes it's not for days.

He's exhausted enough to crash out for whole weeks if he could just close his eyes without being transported back there. _Beam me up, Lee!_

And he tries, he tries to think happy thoughts, tries counting sheep, tries relaxing one muscle group at a time from his toes up, like that bendy yoga instructor _Lois? Lucy? Louise?_ showed him, tries closing his eyes and thinking about diving into black velvet, though for some reason that one always turns into diving into a pool full of Jack and doing a Busby Berkeley routine while he drains it dry.

He drifts.

But at some point he always opens his eyes, and the walls close in, the ceiling drops, and he's alone, boxed in, in his own pine casket buried under six feet of earth, and it's stifling, and he whimpers his brother's name, and he can hear his breath pant in and out, heaving fainter and fainter until all the oxygen is gone and his face is frozen in a death mask, and no one saves him.

_Here lies Dean Winchester: So fuckin' pathetic he imagined himself into an early grave_.

Hudak sits and reads to him, this weird story about some chick called Miranda and her dad, trapped on an island by some fuckin' Darth Vader type dude.

"What the fuck is that crap?" he spits at her.

"It's a play. The Tempest. It's Shakespeare."

"Read it to the college boy. Waste of time reading it to the stupid one."

She marks her page, closes the book, says, "I thought it would take your mind off things."

"Oh it has," he scathes back. "In the sense that it's so fuckin' boring I'm _losing_ my mind listening to it."

She watches him for a few minutes before trying again. "When I was a kid and I was sick, my dad would read to me. It always helped."

He looks at her like her IQ just dropped sharply, snorts. "You saying it helped you detox and distracted you from your broken bones and bullet wounds, Kathleen? Just what was daddy reading to take your mind off all that, huh?"

She waves the book at him, shrugs, gets up and heads for the door. "Guess I'll leave you in peace then, Dean."

"Wait a minute, just – wait."

She turns, and he wants to tell her that no one has read him a story since his mother died, but _the-walls-are-breathing-the-walls-are-breathing-don't-leave-me-please-don't-go-scared-the-walls-are-breathing…_

She sits down again, opens the book and starts up where she left off.

"Everyone knows Ariel's a fuckin' Disney princess," Dean snaps.

She ignores him, keeps reading, and as he stares at her he starts to see the cobwebs again, the patterns that always materialize between him and them if he stares hard enough, gauzy trails through the air that turn into a raging torrent of hailstones. And one of those fourteen-year-old kids who always seems to be chief meteorologist at those dog-and-pony-show local TV networks sticks his face out of the wall and starts droning on about pressure systems and frozen tundra.

He can still hear her voice through the noise as the hail pelts down, drumming steadily on the floor.

"Dean? Are you okay?"

"Full fathom five…" he says dreamily, as he squints to see her through the ice storm.

She glances down at the words she's just read him. "Yeah… it means—"

"I know what it is," he snaps, suddenly irritated again. "It's a war movie. Submarines. Watched it with Lee when we were kids."

"Okay, Dean."

She carries on.

The walls breathe in and out.

He wakes up and he glimpses shadows of things, bugs that aren't there flitting past his peripheral vision, can even hear them buzzing, the bugs that aren't there, can even see them flexing thigh muscles like _fuckin' Lance Armstrong's_ , catapulting themselves up from the floor, can feel them crawling on his skin and inside him, digging pincer jaws into his muscles, ripping their way inside his veins, doing the front crawl through his bloodstream, drinking him, all the way to his heart. And they build dams to block off the trickle of blood that remains, and his heart beats slower and slower, parched, until it's nothing more than a petrified fossil in the dried-out husk that was once his body.

"Chowtime, dude."

His brother pours liquid into him because he has taken to spitting solid food out with an accuracy that has Sam covered in half-chewed lumps, and when he won't even open his mouth for soup Bobby pins him down by his shoulders and Sam grips his nose so he has to open up to gulp in air. And then Sam sloshes it in and Dean is forced to swallow whatever doesn't overflow and trickle down onto the pillow, and tears stream down his face and they stream down his brother's face too.

"You can't just lie there and ignore me," Sam says, from behind the hailstorm.

_Oh yeah?_ , Dean thinks. _Watch me_.

"Bobby says your shoulder's looking good."

_Yeah, and as soon as I can swing, I'm swingin' at you, Sammy-boy_.

"Please talk to me. I know you want to, Dean. Please."

_You know nothing. You don't know me. Never did, never will._

"I don't understand," Sam persists. "You wake up from nightmares calling for me. For _me_. So why won't you talk to me?"

Dean snorts. "I ain't calling for you, bitch."

"Yes you are," Sam counters patiently. "You do. You wake up shouting my name, Dean. You must know you need to—"

"I'm calling the dog, you fuckin' idiot."

Sam's face scrunches up in confusion. "What? The dog? Nancy's the dog's name, Dean."

"Not her dog, _my_ dog," Dean snarls back. "My dog that you shot, you sonofabitch."

His jaw dropping a little, Sam follows up, "The dog's name was Sam?"

"Yep. Named it myself." Dean smirks. "So just think, Sammy, all this time you thought I was calling for you, I was calling my dog. And I thought you were the smart one." He smiles, starts laughing.

Sam leaves.

Dean laughs until he cries.

The walls breathe in and out.

Every so often Sam hauls Dean up out of the bed and staggers him to the can to hit the head or take a crap, and pasty-white blue-veined hands reach out at him from the walls, drawing cold fingernails across his arms, tugging at his tee, his shorts, caressing his cheeks, carding his hair, and the cracks between the polished floorboards grow wider and wider and more hands reach up from between them, and clutch at his ankles. He tries to set his feet down dead center of each strip of lumber so they can't drag him down there into the cracks with them, clings on to his brother and gasps, and Sam turns kind, sad eyes to him and asks him what's wrong, and he wants to scream, _can't you see them? Can't you feel them?_

And after the usual bitten-out, _I can hold it my fuckin' self you know_ , and his brother's unhappy sigh, and more support back to his bed, _his grave_ , Dean lies and wrings his hands, and when Sam gently reaches out to stop him and pins one of his hands down with his own, he rubs his brow with the other, back and forth, back and forth, closing his eyes and leaning into it, harder and harder.

And at some point Bobby comes in and looks hard at him, jerks his head at Sam.

And Sam gets up and they confer for a few minutes, and then Bobby sits on the bed next to Dean, and his eyes are sad too. He reaches out and pushes Dean's hand away from his forehead, rests his own rough palm there. "Don't do this to yourself, boy," he murmurs, and then he cuffs Dean's right wrist to the bed-frame, straps the left wrist, with its bulky cast, down using his belt.

And then Dean headbangs, while he muses that the pillow doesn't offer as much resistance as the wall would, and he looks longingly at it and wonders if he could just run his head into it on the next toilet break, knock himself out cold so he can rest.

If only the hands would get out of the way.

And the walls would stop breathing.

Hudak comes bearing gifts, though not the gift Dean would like, which is her good self dressed in a selection of the best Victoria's Secret has to offer. Still, he amuses himself with the mental image of himself unzipping her jeans with his teeth as she stops next to her dresser and brandishes what looks like…

"Is that a fuckin' piggy bank?"

"Yep."

She says it like it should be self-explanatory but Dean's feeling a tad stuffed in the head being as he's had _no fuckin' sleep_ , and Sam won't give him his _fuckin' drugs_ and he's _fuckin' starving_ , and his shoulder _fuckin' aches_ and the _fuckin' hands_ are waving at him.

"What's your point?" he snaps.

Hudak smiles at him, mildly, calmly, _tolerantly_ , because that's how they're all treating him when what he really wants is a _fuckin' explosion_ from one of them, because he can feel it all building up inside him, this pent-up rage and despair and horror that he wants to scream out at them, at the world, so he has an excuse to fall to his knees and hug his arms around his head and weep himself into oblivion, a straitjacket, a padded cell and drugs, drugs, _drugs_.

But they won't call him on his spite and bile and abuse, because he's _damaged_ , and _broken_ , and _weak_ and _not the same as he was before_.

"It's a cussbox."

"Again?"

"A cussbox," she repeats airily. "There's far too much cussing going on around here and this room is ground zero. So. A cussbox."

"Are you fuckin' kidding me?"

At that she produces a baggie full of what appears to be buttons. "Since you're broke, consider each of these buttons a buck. I'm told you're a pretty snappy hustler when it comes to pool, Dean. I'm sure you'll pay back your IOUs when you're up and about."

"Yeah, well I have fuckin' news for you—"

She clinks in a button.

"Fuck! That isn't fuckin' fair, how the fuck am I—"

A modest handful.

"You fuckin' c—"

He gets a look that tells him he'll be pissing through a bloody stump if he doesn't cease and desist, like, _now_ , and he pulls up. "C—athleen. That ain't f—reakin' fair, Kathleen."

She smirks as she leaves.

"Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck," Dean growls when she's out of earshot. "Harsh language is all I fuckin' have left that's still me."

The hands start beckoning him again.

The walls breathe in and out.

Hudak finds Bobby in the kitchen contemplating a quart of Jim Beam, and he doesn't miss her expression.

"It's happy hour somewhere," he grouses.

"Are you sure the restraints are necessary?" she says, pulling out a chair herself. "One was bad enough but both arms now?"

"Believe me, it's a last resort," he says, wearily. "He's bruising himself."

And Bobby's right, she's seen the evidence herself, blotched parallel strips streaking his brow, temple to temple. "This is just the drugs, right?" she ventures. "It's just that you said he was mute when he was a kid."

"And?"

He's brusque but she doesn't blame him. She's appalled by the wreck of a man lying upstairs in her bed, doesn't want to think of how it must be for family. And she knows Bobby and Sam are taking turns to talk him through his delirium in the small hours after she blocks it out with earplugs so she can haul herself out of bed and be fairly alert on the job.

"It just seems extreme. Like there's more going on." She throws up her hands. "Look, ignore me, I don't know him like you do."

His reply is liberally dosed with reassurance. "It is the drugs, Kathleen. He must've been popping them all the damn time. But the raving, the twitching, the staring, the eye-spinning, the fact he's falling about all over the place… his visual perception is shot. The hallucinations… it's the drugs."

That explains a lot, she thinks. "I thought there was something funny going on in his eyes," she says. "The way he's staring, like he sees a second head or something."

Bobby reaches out, picks up the bottle, unscrews the lid and pours himself a couple of fingers. "He probably _is_ seeing a second head," he says wryly. "Jesus, I can remember it being like a trip, coming down from the damn things. Patterns in the air, these energy fields surrounding people, thinking you can hear the universe, seeing the walls warping and shifting like they're breathing. Faces coming out of them and talking at you. Jesus." He downs his shot in one gulp, looks at her. "It's definitely the drugs."

She knows Bobby's been there, done that. But she has a feeling, a feeling he's trying to kid himself at the same time as he tries to reassure her. "Well how long is this going to last?" she says. "Because we can't really move on to the other mess until he's clear of this."

He says it like he's reciting something he's learned by heart from a pamphlet handed out with a bunch of others at rehab. "The intensity of withdrawal symptoms gradually declines over a period of approximately fifteen days."

Six down.

Nine to go.

"Don't fuckin' touch me, I can do it myself."

"But you can barely stay upright, Dean, and it's slippery, you'll—"

"I can wash myself. I don't need to be dunked in the river like a fuckin' baby, Lee, and I especially don't need that little brat soaping me where the sun don't…"

He sees Sam's face fall, his eyes go all cloudy and dim with pain again.

"I mean Sam," he says hastily. " _Sam_. That's what I meant. _Sam_. Um. I need to sit down… need to s-s—"

His legs fold under him and his brother supports his boneless, twitching slump to the floor, leans him against the bed, and sits down there with him, shuffles his butt back so he's next to him, while the room spins and fireflies fill his vision.

"Dean, you must know this isn't _that_ , never _that_. Can't you separate me from him, can't you let me do this?"

Dean rests his brow on his knees, breathes deep, breathes through the roiling nausea and the ache in his head. "Dunno what you're talking about, Sammy," he mutters.

Sam shifts fractionally closer and Dean can't stop his whole body from tensing up, till he's so brittle that he must surely shatter into a million sharp pieces.

"I just want to be there for you," Sam whispers. "There must be something that'll help, some sort of comfort."

Dean raises his head slightly then, stares right into his brother's sad eyes. "There is something, Sammy," he whispers. "There _is_ something you can do to help me."

He sees the spark of hope there, lighting up Sam's face, because his little brother is sensing a _breakthrough_. And he gathers up all the spite and malice he has inside him, scraping it off his insides, out of the furthest, darkest corners of him, just like this vague memory he has of his mom using that funny little rubber thing _spatula?_ to scrape the last of the cookie dough from the bowl. And with a deft flick of his wrist he hoiks that great big spite-and-malice dollop right between his brother's puppy dog eyes.

"You can fuck off."

_Touchdown!_

"Your brother's really upset," Hudak notes.

"And?" Dean grouches back morosely.

"He's doing his best."

"So he keeps telling me."

"Are you going to eat this?"

Dean leers at her. "If I can lick it off your stomach, yes."

"Jesus, what a prick."

"Yep. Like a baby's arm, Kathleen."

"It's vegetable soup, Dean. No meat." She sighs. "Come on, Dean, we can see you're starving."  
He knows he is too, can see it in the bathroom mirror, in his pinched, white features and the shadows under his glassy eyes; can feel it in the way he shakes with hunger, the way the smell of food that drifts up from downstairs has his guts griping. The cuffs clink and the leather belt creaks as he fists his hands, running his thumb around the tips of his fingers again and again as his eyes track the steam that mists up from the bowl Hudak is holding.

"I know you're hungry, Dean."

She spoons out some of the soup, blows on it to cool it, savors it.

He grabs back the inch he let her have.

"You know nothing. I'm not hungry."

"Fuck, Dean."

He quirks an eyebrow, insolent. "You offering?" When she rolls her eyes he smirks. "You owe the cussbox a buck, Kathleen."

She considers him, stands, places the bowl of soup next to him on the nightstand where the warm aroma can wash over him.

"I'll just leave that there for you then."

Panic wells up. "Wait! Wait a minute… Kathleen, don't leave, the walls, they're—"

She rounds on him. "Why don't you man up and stop giving us a hard time, Dean? Stop giving your brother a hard time when he's trying to deal with this as best he can, when this is hitting him just as hard as it—"

"As hard as it's hitting me?" he yells, and he head spins with the effort of his rage. " As hard as Lee Bender hit me? As hard as he, as he—"

And suddenly he's choking, spluttering, coughing, and Hudak is there next to him with a hand on each side of his face. Her lips move but he can't hear her voice at first, and then as he calms down it's like the volume is turned up again and she's speaking steadily to him.

"Breathe. Calm down. Breathe, Dean. Deep breaths."

"My brother left me there," he spits, when he's able to draw breath. "For weeks, with that fuckin' monster, and Lee, he, he…"

"What? What did he do, Dean? You can tell me. Tell me so I can help you."

He opens his mouth to speak, to share, to _confess_ , he really does. But then he sucks all of that potential back in, sucks the words back in, and stuffs them in a box, weighs it down with rocks, wraps chains around it, and sinks it _full fathom fuckin' five_ in the watery depths of his memory. "Sam left me there," he mutters. "He _left_ me."

"He didn't leave you, Dean," Hudak says softly. "He looked. We both looked."

But he has to push her away too, he has to, because he's filthy, shameful, the lowest of the low. "Yeah," he sneers. "About as hard as you looked for your fuckin' brother."

The crack of her hand hitting his face resounds inside his head for a second or two before the blinding pain hits, and his brain does a brisk little jig inside his skull. He spits blood, feels it trickle from the corner of his mouth, reflexively tries to raise his hand to wipe it away, hears the clink of metal as his hand is jerked back.

"Please…" he whispers, dazed. "Please let me loose… I need. I need help… I feel scared, help me, please, get Sam… I need. To talk to him, I need…"

He lifts his head, looks blearily up at her.

She's gone.

The room is empty except for him.

And the hands.

Sam sees Hudak stride past the doorway, tracks her down to the porch swing, where she sits gently rocking herself, disconsolate.

"I heard shouting…" he starts.

"Yeah," she snorts. "You know, I really thought he was coming out of it, that he was going to tell me what happened… it was right there on the tip of his tongue. But – he just closed it all down again." She shakes her head. "So now we're both keeping our distance, huh?"

He grins ruefully. "He told me he named the pitbull Sam, that every time he's called for me he was really calling for the dog."

"Well that's crap," she counters. "You know it's crap, Sam," she says again, sharper now. "In fact naming the dog Sam says a lot about you and him."

"How's that?" he says, a tad indignantly.

"Idiot! It tells me he had some memory of you, Sam. That somewhere in his mind he hung onto you."

He seems thinks about it, shrugs.

"Anyhoo. Bobby reckons it's fifteen days average for the mood swings and the hallucinations," she says then. "We're at the halfway point." She glances up at him. "Listen, Sam, I'm just wondering…"

"What?"

"This whole waiting for him to tell us thing. Are you sure it's the right tack? It's just that it doesn't seem like he's going to break. He's bottling it up, like Bobby said he would."

"You think we should tell him we know it happened?" Sam asks.

Hudak throws up her hands. "I don't really know, Sam. I can understand why you might think it's best for him to come to us, and God knows I'd rather he didn't know my part in confirming it. I realize you know him far better than I do, believe me. But I just don't think he will say anything."

He sighs, sits down beside her. "If he pushes this down inside him it's going to erupt sometime and it'll be like… global thermonuclear war," he says. "But it's getting harder for me too. I don't know how, I just don't know how to do this, what to say, how to jumpstart that conversation. How do I do it?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry Sam… I know I'm sitting here just elaborating on the problem without offering any solutions. But we're going to have to think of something because if this festers inside him it's going to destroy him."

He tucks his legs up, rests his chin on his knees. "Well, I do have a theory about the food thing," he says. "I know the drugs have affected his appetite but, Jesus, I sit there and I hear his stomach rumbling. He's hungry and he's starving himself."

She nods. "I actually asked Bobby about tube feeding him," she confesses. "Since Bobby seems to be the oracle."

Sam shudders. "I don't know about that. It seems a tad extreme."

"It is," she agrees. "But he's wasting away, Sam. Extreme circumstances mean extreme measures. Or there's always the hospital."

"No," he says, just like she knew he would.

"Anyway, I was thinking about the food thing and how it relates to the _Lee_ situation. Lee specifically, not the hikers." Sam has gotten himself warmed up now, chatters on rapidly. "It's about control, yes? Assaults like that. Dean's a control freak but Lee took that away from him. Anyway I found a website, a website for victims of – _that_. And this food thing happens all the time. It's about control. Do you see?"

She nods slowly. "He feels he lost control, but this is something he _can_ control…"

"Yes! That's exactly it. And restraining him isn't helping, it's making things worse, making him feel even more like he doesn't have a say…"

"But Bobby did that because he was harming himself."

"I know but that was a couple of days ago. I'm taking them off him."

He starts to push to his feet and she stops him with a hand on his arm. "Hold on a second, Sam. Look, I can see where you're coming from with this, but he's having hallucinations, seeing God knows what. And he's still pretty aggressive."

Sam's face is set, though, his mind made up.

"Look, baby steps Sam, yes? How about just the belt off?"

He considers it, sighs. "Just the belt," he concedes.

Sam unstraps Bobby's belt and sits watching his brother, sees how Dean's eyes roam all over the room, sees him focusing on thin air, flinching, squinting, looking at things, around things, past things. Things that aren't there.

Every so often his eyes wander back to Sam and Sam takes a mouthful of his sandwich, chewing noisily, making tiny sounds of satisfaction. "This is good," he says. "Real good."

Bobby calls him from downstairs, he gets up, puts the plate, sandwich half-eaten, on the nightstand. Within reach. "Back in a minute."

He leaves his brother for a good half hour and when he gets back Dean has drifted off to sleep. His features look more relaxed than they have in days, the line between his eyes smoothed out. When Dean sleeps he looks like a kid, Sam thinks fondly.

He takes the empty plate downstairs.

Hudak sits and reads to Dean again as dusk sets in, her voice soothing, soft. And the hailstones ease off, and Dean has a feeling the weather in Kathleen's room is clearing up, that maybe summer's coming.

After a while, Hudak yawns.

"Thank you," Dean whispers. "Thank you for reading to me."

Her eyes widen slightly. "You're welcome Dean. It was my pleasure."

"Will you leave it? The book? Sometimes I can't sleep."

She puts it on the nightstand. "Get some rest," she murmurs, and blow him if she doesn't suddenly lean down and ghost her lips on his temple. "It's nine days tomorrow, Dean," she says softly. "It's getting better."

"Yeah…" he breathes out. "My head feels better. Clearer."

She smiles. "I'll leave the lamp on. Sam'll be up when he gets back."

"Gets back…?"

"They're up at the trailhead putting new tires on Bobby's truck."

He startles at that. "Safe… is it safe?"

"They took the dog. They'll be fine, Dean, don't worry. There's nothing out there now."

His eyes drift closed as she leaves.

He counts down from one hundred and his eyes snap open.

He pushes himself up in the bed as best he can with his broken arm, reaches for the book, finds the page she marked.

"Fuckin' amateur," he breathes as he eases the paperclip up off the page. "Who uses a fuckin' paperclip as a bookmark anyway?"

He straightens out the metal, leans over to the cuff, leaves it dangling from the bed-frame in less than ten seconds. He sits up slowly, the room spinning, reels over to the laundry basket and sorts through Sam's cast-offs, pulls out a tee, jeans, socks, maneuvers himself into them, finds his boots under the bed still covered in mud. He doesn't risk putting them on, not yet.

He's dizzy with hunger, weak, and his leg nags at him, sharp needles of pain shooting up and down. He nearly tumbles ass over tip a couple of times as he limps down the stairs, wincing at every squeak and creak.

And he opens the door and he's free. _Taking back the power_.

The night air is cool and he shivers in the thin cotton tee, stops the door open with his boot and risks sneaking back in. He finds Sam's fleece hoodie hanging on Hudak's hallstand and pulls it over his head. He's buried in it, but it's warm and it smells comfortingly like his brother.

He closes the door, sits on the porch step to pulls on his boots, and schleps up the driveway into the road, laces trailing. He pushes his chilled hands into the pockets of the fleece, feels a familiar papery softness and pulls out a twenty. "Awesome," he breathes out through a grin.

It's quiet, apart from the sound of the universe.

There isn't much traffic, but he hasn't limped five hundred yards before a battered old truck grinds by and stops a few yards ahead of him. For a split second, he's paralyzed with terror, expects to hear gunfire, hear the dogs, and then some grizzled old timer pokes his head out the door.

"Nearly hit you, boy! Where you headed?"

"Nearest bar."

"Well hop in! I'm headed that way m'self…"

Dean clambers in, accepts a smoke, coughs as acrid fumes scratch at his tender airways, makes small talk with his new buddy, Cal.

He reckons it'll be an hour or so until Sam gets back, maybe another half hour until he makes his way up to bed down, since Hudak will waste no time telling him about her _breakthrough_ and how Dean drifted off to sleep like a baby. Factor in another fifteen minutes while they all search the house and the yard, and then Sammy will see his hoodie has hit the road along with his brother. Maybe ten minutes after that, college boy will remember the twenty that was in his pocket, and then all the pieces will fall into place.

So that means roughly two hours in which to get smashed out of his brain.

**21\. Long Night's Journey into Day**

"Leave the bottle," he growls, slamming the twenty down on the bar.

"I don't want no trouble Mister…"

" _Then leave the fuckin' bottle_."

Dean downs a scorching-hot fifth of Jack that sizzles in his stomach like alien blood, and he even looks down, expects to see it burning a hole through his belly and then bubbling right through the floor and on through every single bulkhead till it fizzles through the outer hull of the spaceship and—

_Whoah_. Slow down there, dude. This is Hibbing, Minnesota, not fucking Alien.

Though the way his gut clenches uncomfortably on the booze has him thinking that slippery little sucker is going to burst right through his chest any minute now.

That Ripley, she was totally fuckin' hot. Sorta reminds him of Kathleen.

Booth.

Dark.

Quiet.

_Peace_.

Dean slides off the barstool, picks up his bottle, makes a half-assed attempt to grab the second one too, only to see his hand pass right through it several times. "Cool SFX in this bar," he announces to the old-timer who drove him here, before drawing himself up to his full six foot-one, strides through the bar to a booth at the far end, while virgins throw themselves at his feet and even the town nuns put down their Buds and think unGodly thoughts at the sight.

Cal Mobley, abandoned up at the bar, shakes his head as he watches the boy lurch over to the back, coughing, dragging his leg, shoulders hunched and head bowed, while a couple of the local hobos shoot sympathetic glances his way. "Be out cold in ten minutes," he says to the barkeep.

Dean slides in on the padded bench seat, scoots along so his back is in the corner and he can watch the room. And no one can sneak up behind him.

Shit. He forgot his glass.

No matter. He takes a chug from the bottle, feels the alien acid blood shoot up to his brain this time too. He smiles. When he gets done he's going to have to hold onto the floor to stop himself from falling off the planet. And then he's going to throw one of those nuns across the bar and show her who's God. And then he's going to stagger back to Hudak's house, keeping one eye closed the whole way so he isn't seeing two of everything. And then he's going to piss in her refrigerator. _Good times_.

And then he hears it.

The unmistakable clack of balls coming from somewhere out back.

He studies his left arm, ponders the logistics of feeding the cue across the cast, thinks _fuck it_ , he's going to do it anyway. Sam's bitchface might look less like their dad sucking on a lemon while a compactor reverses back over his foot if he's fisting a handful of twenties when his brother tracks him down and peels him off the nun.

_Shit, the fuckin' weather isn't too good in this bar_ , he thinks as hailstones the size of golfballs start slamming down from the sky. "You said summer was coming," he seethes to Teenage Weatherboy when his face pushes up out of the table, all lined with woodgrain. "And who the fuck invited you anyway?"

"Let me get this straight. He asked you to leave him the book to read. You did. But unlike the rest of the human race, you don't turn down the corner of the page to mark your place. You use a paperclip. And the rest is history."

Bobby sits down heavily on the bed, picks up the discarded book from the floor, squints at the title, actually laughs, albeit it's a hollow chuckle. "Dean Winchester asked you to leave William Shakespeare's The Tempest handy so he could read it. Well Kathleen, that should have been your first fuckin' clue, wouldn't you say?"

She scowls, feels like a damned idiot. That sonofabitch pulled all her strings with his drowsy _aren't I adorable_ bedtime routine, and she fell for it hook, line and sinker. "Look, Bobby," she says, helplessly. "I don't know what to say. He seemed so genuine. He was so convincing."

The old man quirks his head. "Oh, I don't doubt that, Kathleen. And he always has had a way with the ladies."

"Oh, cut it out Bobby, you know damn well—"

"Now, now. I'm just joshin' with you, Kathleen. Kid's bamboozled us all, truth be told." Bobby shakes his head ruefully. "Fuckin' piss artist, always finds a way when you least expect it. Dealing with him sometimes is like arm wrestling without the arms. Before you know it he's pinned you down and you can't work out how he did it."

They both look up as Sam comes back in.

"My hoodie's gone from the hallstand, so he must be planning on staying out past curfew," he snaps, and he throws a hard glare at Hudak.

"So, Sam," she parries evenly. "Your idea to unstrap his wrist, wasn't it? Pity, since he'd never have gotten hold of the book in the first place if you hadn't."

Bobby makes an exasperated noise, rises to his feet, pulls off his cap and scratches his head. "He's played both of you, you idjits," he says. "You and your paperclip… Jesus, please remind me to write bookmark on the shopping list. And you…" He looks at Sam. "Sandwich breakthrough, my ass. He only ate the damn thing because he knew he'd get no further than the top of the stairs without some food in his belly."

He strides to the doorway, looks back. "He's been planning this since you started reading to him, Kathleen," he announces. "It's a good sign. He's starting to think like himself again."  
He seems to be waiting for something and rolls his eyes as Hudak and Sam stare dumbly at him. "Well, come on," he snaps impatiently.

Hudak jumps to it pretty quickly, follows him down the stairs, Sam at her heels. "Where to?" she asks.

"Well if it were me, I'd be fixing to get either high or drunk," Bobby decides as he pulls on his jacket. "I'm guessing drunk's easier so we'll start with the bars. Are there any with pool tables? He'll be needing to hustle some cash for booze."

"Um."

"Um what, Sam?"

"There was a twenty in the pocket of my hoodie."

"Of course there was. How could there not be? Jesus wept a fuckin' river."

Even as far back as Dean is sitting he's bathed in a draught of cool air each time the door to the bar swings open. The place is filling up, getting noisier, hazy blue ribbons of smoke wreath the air, and he feels his throat clench and his chest tighten with each in-breath. His buddy Jack is the best kind of company: he doesn't talk back, has no opinion, doesn't pity him, takes him for what he is.

Which is, in a word, wasted.

And just a tad queasy.

He skulks in his corner, rests his chin on the top of the bottle when his head gets too heavy for his neck, hears the chatter and the fuckin' lousy _lost-mah-woman-an-mah-dog-died_ country crap recede to muffled background noise, thinks there's nothing like a good pair of liquid earplugs for shutting out the world.

A crocodile of leather-clad bikers streams by, each of them as wide as he's tall, and all of them wearing signs on their backs that read _Hustle Me Now, Winchester_.

Dean grins, slides along his bench, pushes up, grabs the table as his vision starts to tunnel, closes his eyes through a _fuckin' awesome_ head rush.

Okay.

Better now.

Steady.

Sort of…

He trails after them, planting his boots very firmly on the floor because in between him sitting down and getting up they've remodeled the joint, and the cracked linoleum has been replaced with Arctic ice floes that bob up and down with every step, threatening to tip over and cast him into freezing cold, black-as-night water, where Sam will never find him.

"Is Dean a heavy drinker, then?" Hudak says from the back seat of Bobby's truck, before she looms up unexpectedly right between them.

Sam and Bobby glance over at each other and Sam does this little throat clearing thing she has noticed him do when he's avoiding answering a question, like he's playing for time and working out something he can say that will be less incriminating.

"Dean's a… typical twenty-six-year-old male of the species," Bobby says, noncommittally.

"That doesn't really answer my question," she says dryly. "Although somehow it totally answers my question. What I mean is, does he have a history of problem drinking? Is he likely to cause trouble he can't fight his way out of?"

"You mean is he an alcoholic?" Bobby says, bluntly.

Sam snorts. "Alcoholics go to meetings. Dean doesn't, which makes him just your garden-variety drunk."

Bobby huffs. "That isn't fair, Sam," he says mildly. "He likes a drink or two. Purely recreational. And he can hold his liquor." He gives Sam a sideways glance. "Unlike some of us here ridin' shotgun."

Dean stands on wobbly legs, bottle in hand, watching the frame play out, senses he's being watched and glances over at some guy who's built like a Russian war memorial, with a stare like a noose and leathers that must have used up an entire herd of cows.

"Wanna play, boy?"

_Hell, yeah_.

He's half the guy's size, knows damn well the ripple of sniggers is the biker's buddies laughing _at_ him, not with him. He lumbers gracelessly around the table, bides his time, pulls his punches, loses, albeit respectably, and then slaps the five bucks he has left down on the table.

"You drive a real hard bargain, kid," War Memorial drawls. "I'm so excited I can barely hold it in."

Dean cocks his head, studies the guy for a second, ranges up close to him, right into his no-fly zone, knows from how the big man's breathing speeds up that he hasn't misread the look in the dude's eyes. "I know some tricks," he breathes, bats his fuckin' eyelashes, licks his top lip with the tip of his tongue because he knows they like that, works the pretty for all he's worth. "I'll throw them in the pot. Fifty bucks."

He sees a bead of sweat suddenly appear on the guy's top lip, then another.

"Fifty it is."

The second bar looks vaguely familiar and it suddenly hits Sam that it's the one he chose to get wasted in right after he thought his brother had died out there in the woods. Bobby turns off the main road, pulls up opposite a platoon of Harley's best parked outside: the local Demon Chrome out to sink a few. Sam sees Hudak glance at them uneasily as they debark the truck.

"Those guys local?" Bobby remarks, as they head up to the door.

"Could be. And depending on which chapter it is, they're not too friendly at the best of times," she replies, and Sam sees her reach a hand down to pat at her hip, checking her service revolver is ready, willing and able, unclipping the stud that secures the flap of the holster.

It's smoky inside, and noisy with chat, laughter and generic background noise, jukebox churning out the usual country-and-western dirge. It's busy too, an assortment of local old-timers with the odd tough guy in the mix, plenty of underdressed women letting it all hang out on a Saturday night. Sam casts his mind back to how deserted the place was when he'd last been there. Why the fuck couldn't his brother have waited until Monday, when Hibbing and his wife were sacked out in front of the TV?

Bobby walks ahead of them, scanning the joint, while Hudak nods at a couple of old guys, stops to talk to one of them as he cuddles his beer. Sam can't see his brother anywhere, and he sends up a prayer of thanks to the Maker, because Dean's recent mood and a bunch of drunken leather-men aren't exactly a match made in heaven, and while his brother might well be capable of pulling a Neo and fighting his way out from under a whole pile of them under normal circumstances, there's no way he can in his current condition.

Hudak makes her way over, dodging a couple of over-friendly drunks en-route, raises her voice and speaks right in Sam's ear. "Cal Mobley – remember him?"

"Cal Mobley of Cal Mobley's upper forty fame?"

"One and the same. Seems he picked up our stray on his way up here but that was over an hour ago and I don't see him anywhere now," she says. "Cal says he bummed a couple of smokes off him and was coughing like a coyote with bronchitis when they got here. Any oxygen left in that tank back home?"

Sam shakes his head. "I don't know for sure. Christ. What the hell has gotten into him?"

Hudak puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes, leans in again. "If he isn't here he won't have gotten far."

Sam looks about again, peering into as many of the smoky booths as he can without incurring a swift right for his troubles, briefly considers tapping a dishwater blond on the shoulder to see if the guy whose tonsils she's apparently snacking on is his brother, before the guy's thrust-out cowboy boot lets him off the hook.

"Where are the bikers?" he shouts to Hudak, who's talking to the guy tending bar. The guy recognizes Sam, nods.

"In the back. The pool tables are through there." She leans over to talk briefly to the barkeep again, and then turns back to Sam. "Joe says Dean bought a quart of Jack. Didn't cause any trouble, just disappeared somewhere to drink it and hasn't been up to the bar since," she says. "And no trouble in here tonight at all, so we can assume he's either sleeping it off in a corner or the back alley, or that he's on a pub crawl."

"Where's the next bar?"

"A mile or so further up the main road. Do you see Bobby anywhere?"

The older man reappears as if she just summoned him, materializing from out of nowhere just to Sam's right.

"There's another bar about a mile up the road," Sam calls over the din. "But we should check the back alley first—"

"No need," Bobby hollers, points into the back of the bar. "We got him, boy."

Sam pushes ahead, maneuvering his way through the crowd into the back room, squinting through the dim light. He sees his brother just poised to take a shot and surges forward, fully intent on grabbing him by the ear and hauling him out of there, only for Bobby to grab his jacket and jerk him to a sudden stop.

"Hang on a minute," the old man says, pulling Sam back into the shadows along the wall.

"What?" Sam snaps. "What's the problem?"

Hudak shunts into them from behind. "Is he okay?"

"He's fine," says Bobby. "Look at him."

Sam glances back over at his brother, then back to Bobby again.

"What? I don't understand. We need to get him and go…"

"Just wait a minute, Sam," Bobby says, exasperated, and he drags him over to a booth and pushes him in, Hudak following behind looking just as puzzled as Sam feels.

"Sit," Bobby orders. "Now look at him. Look at your brother, Sam. _Really_ look at him."

And Sam does, and it's like someone reached out and pulled off the blinkers, the blindfold, the sack over his head, and switched on all the lights. And he lets all his tension out in a sort of sigh crossed with a chuckle.

"What? What is it?" Hudak prods. "What are we looking for? What's wrong with him?"

"It's Dean," Sam says, soft but not so soft that she can't hear him.

She looks over at the pool table herself, and back at both of them. "Yeah, I get that, but what are we doing just sitting here?"

"No, you don't get it, Kathleen," Bobby says, and he smiles. "It's _Dean_."

_God, how could he have forgotten this?_ Sam thinks. How could he have thought they were making any kind of headway with the fake brother, the cheap black-and-white photocopy of the brightly hued original, the _not-Dean_ they've been shackling to the bed.

His brother looks a tad wobbly, is having to hold on as he limps around the pool table, bends without his usual fluid grace. His hair is hectic spikes, his face so pale it's translucent. But it's all in his eyes and his air of confidence as he lines up his shot, cue sliding smoothly over the edge of his cast. He's alert, seeing clearly, thinking ahead, cool, sly, ruthless, as he knocks the ball home, pockets the roll of bills on the side of the table, hooks his bottle of Jack and sucks it down.

"Who's next?" Sam can hear him saying.

He's feral, deadly, the alpha-dog.

He's _Dean_.

Until it all goes to hell, until eyes turn predatory, as they invariably do when it comes to Dean.

It happens fast, the big, thickset figure bearing down on his brother from behind, Dean totally oblivious. Sam sees his eyes widen in shock as an arm wraps around his neck and he's shoved forward into the pool table, to a crescendo of whoops and jeers from the leather crowd.

Bobby is already up and moving into the light as Sam shakes himself out of his own dawning horror, and as he follows the older man, he can hear the biker drooling words into the side of his brother's face, aggressively thrusting his hips into Dean's backside.

"C'mon sugar britches, how's about we go outside and you put them cocksuckin' lips to good use like you promised, huh? Or how's about I just bend you over this pool table and—"

"Not today, friend," Bobby snaps behind him, as he clouts the guy smartly on the back of the skull with the handle of his Bowie.

And it's the cue for ten seconds of total mayhem as Sam takes a punch to the jaw that feels like he's been hit by a shovel, reels, ducks, hits out, lands a right to some world light heavyweight biker's nose mid-pounce, grabs a ball from the pool table and hurls it straight into the front teeth of another, slips, catches a glimpse _oh Jesus, no_ of a hand raised high, bottle aimed at the back of his brother's head. Sam is grabbed and swung around before he can see if the glass makes contact, sent flying across a table. He crashes through it and lands amid puddles of warm beer, the wind knocked out of him, dimly aware of a gunshot ringing out above the shouting.

"Urgh," he mutters as he's heaved up into a sitting position and finds himself staring dazedly at Bobby.

"How many fingers, boy?" the old men are saying, being as Bobby has chosen that moment to introduce Sam to his two clones, and all three of them are kneeling there with the real Bobby dead center. _He thinks_.

"Green?" Sam guesses, and the Bobbies shake their heads in unison before propping him against the wall. He blinks hard, takes deep breaths, is vaguely aware of Hudak kicking ass and taking names from among the newly subdued bikers, sits for a minute while the spinning slows down.

_Dean_.

Sam looks around frantically as Bobby comes back over and kneels down, waves a glass of water at him. "Where's he gone? Bobby?"

Bobby shakes his head. "Rabbited, son. Won't have gone far though, so as soon as—"

"He was hit, Bobby. I saw him get hit, take a bottle to the head…" Sam knows his voice is desperate, panic-stricken. "If he's been drinking he'll bleed heavier… we need to find him now, Bobby, _now_ , we need to—"

Bobby raises his hand. "Just wait. Wait a minute… you look fit to drop, Sam, I don't think—"

"I'm finding my brother," Sam snaps, pushing up awkwardly. "I need to find my brother."

Bobby gazes at him, nods slowly. "Yeah. Okay, kid. We'll go find him together."

Hudak makes her way over from the pool table, frowning. "Listen," she says quietly. "That guy says Dean propositioned him, and all his buddies are backing him up. Seems your brother was unlucky enough to run into the, and I quote, Pink Pistoleros."

Sam bristles. "There's no way," he growls. "No fucking way in hell. After what happened to him? That's crap. They're lying."

Hudak raises a conciliatory hand. "Don't kill the messenger, Sam. Anyway, one of them says he saw Dean head towards the restrooms, so if he isn't in there he might have gone out through the back – it leads into the service alley."

Sam pushes purposefully by her, heads to the restrooms.

Dean stumbles along, legs weak, hands out to the side to keep his balance, laces dragging through puddles, wondering how it is that everything he does just digs the hole deeper and then pulls the dirt in after him.

He vision is graying out. He needs to rest.

He sees a still, quiet corner, sinks gratefully into the blackness and contemplates his sins.

"Bupkis," Sam grates, as he emerges from the restroom. "He must've gone outside. Christ. I'm sure he was hit, Bobby."

"Calm down, Sam," the old man says. "We haven't come this far with your brother to lose him like that. I ain't having it, and neither are you."

They push out through the exit door, the brief light cast by the bar shutting off abruptly as the door slams shut behind them, leaving them standing in pitch blackness. "Sweet baby cheeses on a stick," Bobby murmurs. "It's darker than a hog's ass out here."

The door pushes open behind them and Hudak appears, brandishing a couple of flashlights. "Joe keeps them behind the bar for power outages. The alley isn't very well lit."

She looks to the left and then right, towards the road, where the light is better. "Think he'd head out to the road, try to hitch another ride?"

Bobby shrugs. "It's what I'd do."

Sam moves to trail after them as they start walking, suddenly feels a wave of dizziness.

"Uh. Gonna hurl, I think…" He sits down, his butt landing smack in the middle of a convenient puddle. "I'm gonna take five," he says when Bobby squats down next to him. "I'll catch you up."

"Sure?"

"Yeah… I'll be fine. Just stay on the main road so I can see you."

Bobby hands him the flashlight and walks off up the alley, towards Hudak's bobbing light, and he rests his aching head on his knees for a few minutes, rubs his traitorous gut.

And hears something… snuffling. _Animal_?

He shifts onto all fours, stands wearily.

There's a dumpster back there and Sam approaches it cautiously, training the beam of light around it into the corner, fully expecting to see raccoon headlights reflected back, maybe even have the critter jump right out at him.

What he sees has him sink to his knees. "Dean…" he breathes.

"Knew just where to look, Sammy, huh?" his brother rasps. "With the rest of the trash."

Sam eases forward, stops as he sees his brother tense, draw up his legs and hug himself tight, raise the broken bottle defensively, holding it out in front of him like he would his Bowie.

"Stay. Right. There."

And Sam finds he's had enough, decides it ends here. "Why? Why do I have to stay here? Are you scared of me? Do you think I'm going to hurt you, Dean? Do you _honestly_ think that?"

He directs the flashlight beam right into his brother's face, sees Dean recoil, pull his arm up in front of his eyes, but not before Sam sees the bloody trails streaking down his cheek. "You're hurt."

"Isn't the first time, won't be the last."

Dean: glass-half-empty now, Sam thinks. "Answer the question, Dean," he presses.

"What? What question?"

Dean suddenly sounds confused, unsure. _Head wound_ , Sam thinks. He sets the flashlight down, his brother still bathed in its powerful glow. "Do you think I'm going to hurt you?"

"Uh…" Dean squints, shakes his head as if he's trying to shake out the chaos, the clutter. "You did before. In the woods."

Sam suddenly remembers the painful, roundabout conversation he'd had with his brother when he was trying to convince him he wasn't Gabe, thinks this is looking to turn out just like that if Dean can't stay in the now. "That wasn't me, Dean," he says wearily. "That was Lee."

"Lee, Sam. What's the difference?"

And Sam explodes. "What's the difference? _What's the fucking difference_? I didn't rape you, Dean. That's the fucking difference. I didn't rape you, and how you can—"

"No, dammit," Dean says harshly and his face is all lit up with alarm, dismay, dread, trepidation. "No, that isn't… what the hell are you talking about? That never happened, it never happened." He shakes his head again, violently, vehemently. "No. That never happened. It's a fuckin' lie. You're lying."

"God…" Sam makes a move towards Dean, has this longing to grab him tight, shield him from the world, forever.

"Stay the fuck away from me!"

"Okay! Okay!" Sam raises his hands in submission, falls back and waits a minute, waits until Dean's heaving breaths slow down. "Dean," he tries. "You're never going to recover from this if you don't face up to it. I can help you, I'm your brother, I want to be there for you—"

"Did Stanford make a huge mistake or are you deaf?" his brother snarls. " _Nothing fuckin' happened_. You just got a vivid imagination, Sam, that's all."

There's nothing else for it, Sam thinks, knows he's going to lance this pussing sore right here and now. "We know it happened, Dean," he says gently. "We know what Bender did. We saw the cuts, the bruises. We found out what to check for, and we checked. We know."

His brother is silent for long minutes, and when he finally speaks, all the fight is gone. He's devastated, destroyed, his voice cracked and broken. "You _checked_? How could you do that, how could you… what does that even mean? I can't believe you did that…"

Sam doesn't know what he really expected, but knows the sheer defeat in his brother's voice and the lost look in his eyes isn't it. "Dean, I just… I _had_ to know," he says, haltingly. "I couldn't just sit and wonder, speculate about it."

"Why? _Why_ couldn't you do that?" his brother chokes out, scrubbing at his eyes. "Why couldn't you leave me with a shred of fuckin' dignity… what is this to you, what is it you're getting from this? Proof I'm an equal-opportunity whore? Is that it?"

"No, no, Dean – _Jesus_." Sam swallows down the lump swelling his throat, keeps going. "No… you can't really think that, tell me you—"

Dean cuts in again, his eyes and voice suddenly cold, bleak. "When we were kids," he says, so quiet Sam can barely hear him. "When we were kids, dad would leave us for weeks at a time."

Sam is caught off-guard by his brother's sharp left, but fuck knows, if Dean ever needed him to indulge him it's now. So he does. "Yeah, I remember. And you took care of me, and that's why you need to let me take care of you now. My turn to be the big brother…"

"Sometimes… sometimes the money would run out."

Dean's voice is getting softer and softer, and Sam suddenly starts to feel a dull ache in his chest, a lump in his throat, the urge to scream out _no-stop-there-don't-wanna-know-you-did-that-for-me_.

But he already knows, always has known.

"I was too young to hustle pool."

And Sam remembers how he always hated it when Dean left him alone in the motel room after dark, remembers how he always hated it when Dean came back late and wept himself to sleep.

"I know you heard what that guy said," his brother hisses. "Cocksuckin' lips. Guess what goes around comes around, huh, Sammy? Guess I was fuckin' asking for it, huh, sending out some signal…"

"Shhhh…" Sam whispers, scoots a couple of inches closer. "Stop this. Stop trying to push me away. Whatever you did then doesn't matter. It makes no difference. There's no shame here, Dean. No shame. That's why I needed to know."

Dean is looking at the ground, and Sam can see he's shaking, sees him put the broken bottle down and start rubbing his brow, back, forth, sees him start to retreat back into himself, back into _not-Dean_.

"Dean, look at me." There's no response, and Sam raises his voice, injects a shot of _John Fuckin' Winchester_. "Look at me!"

His brother obeys, just like he knew he would.

"Dean, I needed to know so I could look you in the eye, like I'm doing right now, and tell you that you don't have anything to feel ashamed of, or guilty for," Sam says. "So you would know I know, and that it changes _nothing_ for me, _nothing_ about the way I feel for my brother. _Nothing_ about the kind of man I think he is. The best. _The best_."

Dean crumples abruptly and completely. "I can't… I don't… don't know what to do, Sammy, I don't… I feel…"

Sam creeps even closer, stealthy. "You don't have to do anything, Dean, just let me do it. Let me help you, let us help you. We can help you. It wasn't your fault Dean… not your fault. You don't have to feel ashamed, never that…"

His brother looks up then, right at him, and his eyes are desolate. "But you don't know," he whispers. "You don't know, Sammy, don't know what happened, when he, when he—"

Sam cuts in, isn't going to force his brother to lay out the details, knows that though he's so close now his brother needs more time, and he's infinitely patient, can give him that time. "Dean," he soothes, reaches out, puts his hand on his brother's cheek. "I know what he did. You don't have to—"

"No!" Dean's outcry is laced with pain, grief, self-recrimination. "Not him! You don't know what _I_ did! You don't know what _I_ did when he – when he…" He hugs himself even tighter, pushes himself so far back into the wall he looks as if he's trying to embed himself in it, trying to melt into it.

And words from a website march across Sam's field of vision and it suddenly slots into place. Oh… oh no… _no-no-no_. "God. Dean… Jesus, man."

Caution tossed aside, Sam crowds in, wraps his arms around his shaking brother, feels him tense up with anxiety. "No… you don't get to do that with me, Dean," he says, firmly. "You know I would never hurt you. You _know_ that."

There's a second or two when Dean doesn't react but then he throws himself into the embrace, hanging on with an almost frightening intensity at the same time Sam senses movement just beyond the dumpster, sees Bobby peek round it, eyebrows raised in a question. Sam shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and the old hunter reads the signal loud and clear and ducks back out of sight.

He grips onto his brother, tight, to soothe the tremors. "I do know what you did, Dean. I _do_ know," he murmurs in his ear. "But you need to listen to me now, very carefully. It was a natural reaction. It's how we're programmed. I know you're confused… but it didn't mean you liked it, or wanted it. It didn't mean you took part or led him on. It happens all the time. _All the time_. I can prove it to you. Please believe me. Do you believe me?"

Dead silence for long moments and then his brother whispers a reply. "I want to go home."

"We'll go home, Dean. We'll go soon, I promise."

And they sit, and Sam holds onto his brother and rocks him.

**22\. Lay Your Weary Head to Rest**

They sit there for a long time, Sam's arm draped over his brother's shoulder, Dean's head resting on his. Dean still feels tense, muscles rigid, and he hangs back as Sam untangles himself, stretches, reaches for the flashlight and gets up.

"Can't stay here, dude," Sam says softly, reaching a hand down. Everything about Dean's attitude screams mortification, he just knows that if it were daylight Dean's cheeks would be stained red with embarrassment.

"They know, huh?" his brother whispers, keeps staring at the ground.

Sam sighs, eases back down into the muck again, feels dampness seeping through to his butt, wonders if the seat of his pants will ever wash up clean. "They do know, Dean," he confirms gently. "Well, they know it happened. But they don't know the details. I mean… what we just talked about."

"It's just… I don't want _pity_ ," Dean spits out. He starts rubbing his brow again, and Sam thinks that if he ever, _ever_ sees his brother reduced to doing that again it'll be too soon.

"They don't pity you," he says, reaching out his hand yet again to still his brother's. "They feel sorry that it happened to you. They feel compassion, and they hurt for you. Like I do. But that's not the same as pity."

Dean sighs, unconvinced. "I was a prick, Sam," he mutters. "I said things, things to you, to Kathleen… didn't mean 'em, couldn't help myself. Felt so… angry. Hated myself. _Hate_ myself. Bad news. I'm bad news."

Sam doesn't like the sound of this rambling, the direction it's heading in. "C'mon," he says, pushing up again. "I saw you get hit, must've been pretty hard to have broken the bottle. I need to look at your head."

After a moment Dean takes his hand and Sam heaves up, almost pulls him off his feet, not used to his brother's lack of bulk. "This eating thing, I know it's partly a control issue," he ventures, laying his arm across his brother's shoulder again as he reels, gripping hold of him by his cast to help keep him upright. "But it isn't helping you, not really. It isn't helping you take control of your recovery."

Dean snorts, albeit weakly. "You sound like fuckin' Dr Phil," he mutters, before he stops dead and raises his hand to his eyes for a second. "Head rush… ohhhh…"

"Will you try eating something for me, Dean? I'm really worried about this. You're dropping more weight, it isn't good for you and I'm losing sleep worrying about it." It's a low blow, Sam knows, bringing the focus back on to himself, but he knows it'll pull his brother's strings like nothing else.

"I'll try. I'll try, Sam…" Dean whispers.

They walk slowly up towards the top of the alley, to where Bobby has parked his truck. The old man is leaning on the door, Hudak half-asleep in the shotgun seat.

Bobby stands to attention as they loom up out of the darkness. "Really had me worried, kid," he says, feelingly, walks a few steps forward, arms open. Dean collapses into them.

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"

"No, no, no," Bobby chides gently, enfolding Dean in his embrace. "Got nothing to be sorry for, boy. Nothing."

"Didn't know what to do… how to stop it, stop _him_ … didn't know who I was…"

Bobby has one of his big hands on Dean's head, raises it to Sam, bloody. "Come on now, boy. We need to look at your head, stitch it up. Nasty gash you got there."

"Feel sick," Dean suddenly blurts out, and his knees buckle.

"How much liquor did you drink, boy?" Bobby says, bracing to support the added weight.

"Dunno," Dean slurs, as it suddenly catches up to him. "Dn feel s' good… Sam?"

"I got you, Dean. I got you," Sam says, starts helping Bobby maneuver his dazed brother up into the cab.

"Oh… gn be sick…" Dean says, faintly, and he jacknifes and yawns a flood of stinking brownish fluid down onto the road, Bobby jumping nimbly out of the way. He retches for several minutes, spits saliva, and Sam hauls him back into the cab, shaking, shivering, eyes shocked and staring. "Oh…" he whispers again, clutching his belly as he slumps against the seat.

"Hard liquor on an empty stomach'd do it," Bobby says, as he slams the door and climbs in up front. He reaches across, opens the glovebox and roots around, producing a plastic grocery bag and thrusting it back at Sam. "Justin Casey," he says, in response to Sam's glare. "Watch the upholstery, boy," he barks at Dean.

"Fuck the fuckin' upholstery," Dean mutters, and for a minute Sam thinks he sounds like _Dean_.

Hudak's looking back at them and when she looks at Dean, her face is soft in a way Sam hasn't seen it before, all gentle, big eyes. And he glances down to see Dean staring back, hears his brother whispering, "I'm real sorry, ma'am… dunno what came over me… real sorry."

Hudak nods, smiles, and it's so old-world cowboy-John-Wayne courteous, Sam grins there in the dark.

Dean always has had a way with the ladies.

Sam thinks they might have turned a corner, that things might be better.

But it's never that simple where his brother's concerned and in some ways, many ways, it's no better over the next few days.

Dean wakes from screaming, sweat-soaked nightmares two, three times a night, stares wildly up at Sam, doesn't know who he is, where he is, sometimes doesn't know who Sam is. He jumps out of his skin, white-faced, if anyone touches him, even brushes up against him without warning, chases his food around the plate after a few unenthusiastic bites.

And Sam thinks to himself that his brother is fading before his very eyes, colors becoming more and more muted and washed out. "I don't know how to pull him out of this pit," he confides to Bobby. "I can't fucking bear it."

Several times Dean abruptly lets rip a torrent of spiteful abuse that Sam just soaks up _like a fuckin' sponge_ , his brother mocks. "Why don't you fuckin' grow a pair, Sammy?"

And it's like Dean is pushing him, constantly trying to see just how far he can go, before he crests the peak of Mount Savage and descends the other side, calming down, horrified at his own ferocity, weeping tears of self-disgust, apologizing all the damn time so that _you have nothing to be sorry for, Dean_ , becomes Sam's mantra, Bobby's mantra.

"Always hurt the ones you love, boy," Bobby sighs, five days after the alley, as he pins Dean's arm behind his back and hauls him off Sam's prone body before his flying fists really injure his brother. "Lucky you ain't as juiced up as normal."

For some reason, Hudak remains immune, sits and reads to Dean without coming under fire as he progresses from the bed to the couch to the porch swing.

It's a breakthrough of sorts, though it doesn't start out that way.

"You fuckin' left me. Douche," Dean grates balefully.

It's one time too many for Sam, and suddenly it shoots right off the Richter scale. "Jesus, I am quick-sick of this!" he snaps. "I never fucking left you, Dean, I thought you were dead. If I'd known you were alive I would have been out there looking – just like I came looking after Bobby saw you." He sees Hudak appear in the doorway, points at her. "Stay out of this! This is getting sorted once and for all, right the fuck now."

She freezes, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, gapes at them, head turning from him to Dean like she's watching a game of tennis.

"Weeks fuckin' later! _Weeks_!" Dean hollers. "That bastard, what he did to me… you got no clue, no clue…"

"Then _tell me_!" Sam roars. "I don't know because you keep it all inside! Tell me, because, because…"

"Because you want to know what a fuckin' slut I am?" his brother yells back at him. "That I put out for that prick? Is that it?"

And Sam suddenly wilts. "No," he says, wearily. "I need to know because it was my fault. Because if I'd had my head in the game, Bender never would have got me in the first place… because I should _damn_ well know what you went through because I was stupid enough to let my guard down." He throws his hands up in surrender. "It's nothing to do with what you _think_ you did, Dean. I'm not duking that one out with you. It's so far from true, it's… I'm just not doing it."

He turns away, but his brother follows, grabs his arm, spins him around, and he's as angry as Sam has ever seen him, his eyes alight with rage, hurt, despair.

"It _is_ your fuckin' fault! You fuckin' left me there!" Dean shouts bitterly. "Left me with that fuckin' sonofabitch, and I had no way of getting out, no way to escape… hauling my ass all over the fuckin' place… what was left for me? What was left for me, huh? As long as Sammy got out, as long as Sammy got to do what he wanted…"

He stops very suddenly, buckles at the knees, sits down heavily on the floor, starts rubbing his brow. "You never even looked back," he says. "You picked up your bag and you walked away, and you never even looked back. You left me standing there in the pouring rain. And then I had to deal with _him_ without you there. And you don't know, don't know what it was like…"

His voice trails off and everything is quiet, and Dean seems to go into some sort of trance, rocking from side to side.

"What are we talking about?" Hudak suddenly interjects, in a small voice. "Just who are we talking about here?"

Sam doesn't have a reply, stands there feeling all sorts of upset, shocked, horrified. _Guilty_. And he suddenly flashes to the other _not-Dean_ and what it told him, _he's sure got issues with you_ , can hear it jeering, thinks that he never really heard what it was saying, dismissed it because it wasn't his brother speaking the words. But maybe it really was.

Dean seems to snap out of it, mutters low, "Lee Bender… he took all my hope. I thought, I _believed_ , that there was something more, there had to be. I didn't know what it was. Something… someone I maybe _mattered_ to. I had dreams, saw 'em in my dreams, but no one came. No one came to fetch me home, and so then I knew my head was all mixed up and _they_ were my family. Lee and Missy, and it wasn't ever gonna get better. _Ever_. That was my life, and years and years would go by and he'd… _use_ me, use me up until there was nothing left. I knew no one was coming for me, that I imagined it all. Imagined that I mattered."

Sam is rooted to the spot, can't talk over the lump in his throat, feels hot tears simmer in his eyes, and when Hudak steps around him and sits down next to his brother, Sam sees that she's crying.

And Dean rambles on. "You leaving… you left me, went away. Left me with that sonofabitch who took my hope and my dreams. I had 'em too you know. Dreams. But my dreams had you in 'em, included you. I had no hope after you left, Sammy. No more dreams. And that was my life and years and years would go by and he'd use me, use me up. You never even looked back. _Fuck_. My head, in my head… it's all blurring together, confusing me. I'm real confused, Sammy… what am I, what am I gonna do…?"

He falls silent, and he's still rubbing his brow, and Hudak turns and he leans into her. He doesn't weep but he releases his breath in a sobbing sigh, buries his face in her shoulder.

"Dad. You're talking about dad," Sam whispers. "And me leaving for Stanford…" He rouses himself, kneels in front of his brother. "You could have come with me," he breathes. "I had it all planned, bought the bus ticket. You could have come with me."

"You never asked," Dean chokes out, from somewhere under Hudak's shoulder.

"I did… I did ask," Sam says, sadly. "But you didn't listen. You never took me seriously. You never heard me. And it got to time for me to go and I thought you'd never leave him."

"I would have. I would have."

They sit there in a sort of group hug for ten minutes or so, none of them saying a thing. And then Dean says the words Sam has been longing to hear since he helped his brother stagger along the alleyway outside the bar.

"I'm hungry."

It's only a kid-sized portion of mac-and-cheese, downed slowly in red-eyed silence, but it's the first thing his brother has willingly eaten since he came around after the river, and after Hudak _checked_. And he even eats a yogurt afterwards.

He jolts awake from his usual nightmare, gets up to take a piss, sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs at his thigh. He reckons the dog's teeth caused some nerve damage: although it's pretty okay most of the time now, when it does bother him it shoots little bolts of electricity right up through the top of his skull.

He sinks back onto Hudak's bed, feels the usual stab of guilt that the deputy is still crashing in the guest bedroom, but tells himself she insisted. The soft mattress more than makes up for her room, which both amused and appalled him once he was alert enough to realize it was decked out like Macy's bridal department.

"You awake?" he whispers to Sam, down on the floor.

"Whurgghhhh?"

"Um. Are you awake?"

"Yes. _Now_."

"Sorry…"

"No. No." Sam sits up, hair looking like he just rammed his pinky into an electrical outlet. "What do you need? Dean?"

He swallows hard. "Did you mean what you said?"

"Said? What? Said what, dude?"

"That I could have gone with you. That you wanted me to."

Sam flops back down, yawns. "Yes. I did mean it. I had a bus ticket for you, still have it, in fact. Even had a job lined up for you, if you wanted it. Local autoshop needed a mechanic." He pauses a moment, glances up to where he can just see his brother's too-sharp features backlit by the moonlight beaming through the window. "Did you mean it when you said you would have gone with me?"

He hears his brother sigh, knows the answer already. "I never could have left him, Sam. He needed me."

"But he left you."

"Yep. He left me."

And Sam hears the unspoken words: _everyone leaves me_.

"Bet you wish I'd never shown up at Stanford, huh?" Dean says, and he gives a sort of huffed-out, derisive laugh.

"Dean, I'm not stupid," Sam starts. "I know you blame yourself for Jessica, think maybe that thing only turned up there because it was tracking you." He senses his brother shudder up there on the bed. "I told you what I saw, the vision," he continues. "It was always going to happen and if you hadn't shown up when you did I would have been there with her, and—"

"You could have stopped it. Saved her," Dean mutters.

"No, that's not what I was going to say, Dean. I couldn't have stopped that thing. If I hadn't been with you, I would have died there with her. You _saved_ me. Ever think of that? And I can tell you one thing for sure…" Sam sees his brother is hanging his head, seems to have drifted off into memories. "Dean!"

Dean startles, looks at him.

"If I had been there when it happened and managed to get out, I would have come looking for you," Sam says. "I never would have lasted there. Because I love you. And I missed you. So you can cross that off your list of things to be guilty about."

He flops back down. "Now get some sleep, Dean. These chick-flick moments are wearing me out."

He hears Dean fidget up there on the bed for a few minutes. "What I said before… it ain't your fault, Sammy," his brother murmurs. "Things happen. I don't blame you. Never have."

And Sam knows his brother isn't just talking about the woods, about Bender. "I'm not going anywhere, Dean," he says. "You, me, we're in this together and I'm not leaving you. So – no point in trying to push me away all the damn time. Not gonna work."

Dean eats two pancakes when he gets up, drowns them in syrup, washes them down with three cups of coffee and twitches for the rest of the morning.

He paces around the house, the yard, weeds Hudak's flowerbeds, searches through her shed for shears to lop back her overhanging branches, hollers for a broom to sweep out _this fuckin' rat shit_ , enthusiastically sets traps for the _fuckin' mothers_ , earnestly debates with Bobby over whether a square of chocolate or a dollop of crunchy peanut butter would make better bait.

After a couple of hours he's beat, slumping on the porch swing, pale and shaking, worrying at his shoulder, his leg.

But he's Dean, Bobby thinks, as he idly glances at his wristwatch and wonders if they've scored any rats yet. "Time to go home, boy," he says fondly, ruffling Dean's hair on his way inside. He finds Hudak backing out of her shed, using a shovel to maneuver a fully-laden rat trap out onto the grass.

"I heard it snap," she says ruefully. "I can't stand emptying the damn things. Which is why the shed is rat central, I guess."

Bobby bends, picks the critter up by the tail. "What the hell are you feeding these things, Kathleen? I've seen smaller cats." He bags it, scratches his head. "Lock your dog in there overnight. That'll sort 'em."

"Can't," she says, looking over to where the hound is lying flat on its back, paws in the air, soaking up the weak spring sunshine. "She's scared of rats."

Bobby shakes his head. "You could try a glue trap. Then shoot the mothers with a BB gun from a safe distance. You're tough enough."

"Yeah. Well then. I guess I'll be emptying the rest of these myself," she says.

Astute, perceptive, but Bobby knew that. "Kid needs to get home, Kathleen. Can't stay here forever."

She bites her lip, looks over his shoulder, and he gets this funny feeling she's checking that the coast is clear. "I didn't know if I was going to tell you this," she begins, and Bobby's heart sinks because it takes him right back to that forest discussion, the revelation about what Lee Bender was likely to have been doing to his boy.

"Oh yeah…?"

"We got the report back on the fire up at the Bender place yesterday. No body was found. She wasn't in there when it burned, Bobby."

For a second his stomach turns somersaults and his vision grays out. "Then it's even more important I get him out of here," he says, and she nods in agreement.

Christ, this is awkward, and he wishes he had Dean's silver tongue."I want to thank you, Kathleen," he says, haltingly, trying to find the right words but stumbling, finding himself tongue-tied. "I don't know what I'd have done without your help with this, you being there for me and the boys. I want you to know I'll always appreciate what you've done for him, and that I'll never forget it."

She smiles and he thinks, _what a fuckin' woman_ , wishes he were twenty years younger.

Sam wraps his arms around her, even sheds tears, but for all his college education and books, he just can't find the words. So Hudak just hugs him back and pats his head as he engulfs her for long moments and sniffs, before finally managing to choke out something that makes sense.

"If you ever need us, just call. We'll be there. I owe you everything. _Everything_."

She finds Dean dozing on the porch swing, lazily rocking it back and forth with his good leg.

She clears her throat. "I need you to know something."

"Well, that don't sound too good," he drawls, cracks one eye open.

"I need you to know it was me. Who checked. And I'm sorry."

He sits up, both eyes open and suddenly bleak. "Okay. Well. Had to be done. On balance I'd rather have your hands poking around down there than Sam's or Bobby's. I guess."

She shudders. "No poking occurred, Dean. I can guarantee you that." After a minute she continues. "You need to do something for me."

He raises an eyebrow. "And what might that be, Kathleen?"

"You need to get checked out for… you just need to get checked out. A blood test." She looks him right in the eye, sees him flush and grow uncomfortable. "You have to face up to this," she says. "You need to get checked. You know what I mean."

He shrugs, looks away, doesn't commit, and they both stare at the middle distance for a couple of minutes. "Maybe it doesn't matter," he says suddenly. "Maybe I just won't ever do _that_ again anyway."

She can't help herself, she blurts it out. "Well that would be a hell of a waste."

"Well, there you go," he says. "Even the thought of watching Triple X makes me feel like I'm gonna yack. Can't see that working with the ladies, Kathleen."

"Look, don't take this the wrong way, Dean," she says, chooses her words carefully. "But you aren't the first person this ever happened to. And it's very recent. And people deal. And they move on." And inside her head, a little voice whispers that sometimes they never really find their way back from it.

She sees his leg start to jiggle, remembers Sam saying it's a sign of nerves.

"Give it time," she says. "Don't let it define you. You're still the same, still _you_. This is something that happened to you, something that was done to you. It doesn't have to _become_ you. Jesus, I'm sure that makes no sense."

Dean smiles. "It does make sense, sort of. But it's… I feel like people can see into me, see what happened…" He pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Look, I'm not used to this. Talking like this. I'm sorry, I know I'm making no sense myself… but it's like I feel I'm _marked_. Or something. That people can tell."

She shuffles closer, reaches out and turns his face to hers, looks right into his eyes.  
"I can't see it," she says. "I can't see any mark. All I see is this beautiful boy with his whole life ahead of him, there for the taking."

And it's totally natural to lean in slowly and touch her lips to his, to tease them gently apart and dip her tongue in and taste what's there for long moments, to feel him return the favor, lips moving soft on hers. _It's there for the taking_ , she suddenly realizes, but she stops herself, pulls back so her forehead rests on his. "Much better when you're breathing," she whispers. "You've still got it, Dean. Always will have it. Don't waste it, huh? Find the joy in it."

He leans in and kisses her again, just ghosts his lips against hers. "You ever need anything," he says. _Anything_."

Bobby drives non-stop, the one time they pull over for refueling something of a disaster when some bulky trucker brushes up against Dean as Sam is waiting in line to pay for a trayload of chili dogs. His brother yelps, flinches, and Bobby has to steer him outside. They perch on the truck bed to eat, and Dean doesn't say much.

It's dark when they drive under the arch, and Sam has to shake Dean awake. "We're home," he says, simply.

"At fuckin' last," his brother breathes. He stumbles a little as he gets out of the truck and Sam thinks it might be his sheer relief that has him wobbling.

They sack out on Bobby's couch, swathed in blankets, the old man announcing that he's off to his bed the minute he locks the door behind them. Sam flicks through the local TV guide, goggles for a second and then channel surfs his way through God only knows how much sport and rolling news until he finds what he's looking for, just in time.

The credits roll and his brother's drowsy eyes light up with pleasure. "Awesome. Giant killer rabbits. We should definitely watch this… watched it with Lee when we were kids…"

It's like a knife twisting in his gut, and Sam wonders how long the wound will stay raw.

Dean seems not to have noticed his slip, eyes Sam suspiciously. "Did you fix this? Is this you shining?"

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Jesus, the movie is as dire as Sam remembers. _Creepy fuckin' rabbit teeth_. "I want you to know something, Dean," he says suddenly.

Dean is slowly listing over to the side, jerks upright. "Whassup?"

"I want you to know that you _do_ matter, Dean. That all the time you were lost you mattered, and when I thought you were dead you still mattered. More than anything ever has." It's the first time Sam has really spoken about those awful days _beyond-Dean_ , and he finds his mouth suddenly dry, his voice husky. "Even gone you were still there, still all around me, and the thought I would never see, or touch that again… that you were lost to me, was – I can't even put it into words, Dean."

He's looking down at his feet, but he sees his brother in his peripheral vision, sees him raise his hand, swipe at his eyes. "But you matter," he goes on. "And I know damn well you think I could just keep going without you, but this is a two-way street. I know what it would do to you to lose me, Dean, I know. But I need for you to know that losing you would do the same to me. You matter, you fucking matter. Get it through your thick skull, dude." He laughs sort-of, breaks the spell, because the emotion is just too much to handle, too much for Dean to handle too, he knows.

"Okay. Okay, Sammy," his brother whispers.

Sam doesn't believe in quick fixes, knows there isn't one for what his brother has endured, knows Dean isn't okay, not really. But the promise of okay hangs there, and he's going to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother and grab that promise of recovery and hang onto it. For as long as it takes.

They watch the movie.

Dean yawns.

Dean's eyes drift closed.

Dean lists over again, very gradually, until his head is on Sam's shoulder, and he's limp, relaxed.

Sam quirks his own head, rests his cheek against his brother's hair, closes his eyes, sighs. "Never leave me," he whispers.

Dean rests.

Clipboard Man is making right for her along with Front Desk Woman.

She sits on her bench, scrunches her toes inside her new sneakers, smooths the skirt of her new dress.

She can overhear snatches of their conversation. _Found wandering along the road… filthy… half starved… can't remember her name… no ID… passerby dropped her into Child Services…_

Clipboard Man squats in front of her, smiles.

She smiles right back, a full-on tooth smile.

"You look just like my brother, Mister…"

**The end**

**Read the sequel:[The Killing Moon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/611635) **


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